by Damien Love
The air under the bus was warmer, he noted. It smelled terribly of spent oil and rubber. He was about to watch his legs get crushed, he thought, weirdly calm.
The wheel stopped. He heard the hiss of brakes, the other hiss of the bus’s door. Scrambling up, he walked shakily to the front of the vehicle, feeling his face flood red. The driver shook his head as he mounted the stairs.
“Honest to God, Alex. There’d have been another bus seven minutes from now. It’s not worth it, mate, it’s really not.”
The doors hissed again as the bus lurched off.
“Loser,” a girl named Alice Fenwick muttered as Alex passed up the aisle.
“Loser,” her friend Patricia Babcock chorused.
“Thank you for your messages of last evening,” Alex chirruped back, dusting snow from his trousers. “Your thoughts are always appreciated.”
“Loser.”
He swung into an empty seat and busied himself with the pages from his bag. His essay, just as he had started it, and, he realized as he read, just as he would have finished it, had he been able to marshal all his vague thoughts. It was pretty good.
He thought back. He remembered sitting at the computer, fuggily deleting and retyping the same lines. He remembered looking at the clock. The fox. The toy robot. Then waking this morning, slumped over his desk.
He must have woken and finished the composition during the night without remembering. Either that, or he had typed it while he was asleep. That was a thought. That would be fantastic. Auto-homework. Maybe he could train himself to do it.
His reverie was interrupted by his friend David Anderson sliding onto the seat beside him, already chewing the bubblegum he would keep working on for the rest of the day.
David leaned over, blew a green bubble, letting it pop before sucking it back in.
“God, did you get that done? I forgot until this morning. Let’s have a look.”
He lifted the pages easily from Alex’s hand, read them over, frowning, cracking gum.
“Yeah,” Alex began. “I’m not really sure about this, see—”
“Shut up,” David said. “Your stuff’s always brilliant. Miss Johnson loves you.” He read on, blew out an impressed puff. “Yeah, man. That’s brilliant. She’s going to love this all over the place. I can’t understand a word of it.”
Alex began to say something, decided not to, shoved the pages back into his bag. As he did, his fingers touched something cold. Peering in, he saw the toy robot gazing up from the darkness with its empty eyes.
“Hey, how did you get in there?” Pulling it out, he offered it for David’s inspection. “Check this dude out. This is the one I was telling you about.”
As he handed it over, Alex felt something cold creep across his scalp. For half a second, he recalled the weird, woozy sensation he had felt the night before. But this was a much more familiar, much more mundane feeling.
Looking up, he saw the potatoey face and porcupine hair of Kenzie Mitchell leaning over from the seat behind, Alice Fenwick and Patricia Babcock at his shoulders, giggling. Kenzie was in the process of letting a long, thick loogie dribble from his mouth into Alex’s hair. Across the aisle, the five other members of his little group sat snickering, interchangeable boys whose names Alex had never bothered to remember.
“All right, toy boy?” Kenzie said, slurping what was left of his spit back in and wiping his mouth. “You and your girlfriend playing with your dolls again?” He lunged and plucked the robot from David’s hand, then swung back across the aisle.
“Look at this, boys,” he said, holding it aloft. “Little freak’s brought another freaky little toy to school.”
Alex stepped into the aisle. “Give me that back.”
“Whoa, look.” Kenzie snickered. “It’s getting angry. What’s the matter, toy boy? Daddy never teach you to share? Oh, wait: don’t have a daddy, do you? Just mummy and her boyfriend.”
“Give me it.”
“Or what—Jesus!” Kenzie stopped. The hand that held the robot was running red. “Poxy thing’s dangerous,” he said. “Too dangerous for little toy boys like you. Not suitable for children under three. Reckon I’ll have to keep it out your reach. In fact,” he went on, rising and yanking open the window above his seat, “best thing would be to destroy it for your own safety.”
“No, you won’t. You’ll give it back.” Alex swallowed, mouth dry, copper-tasting, trying not to stutter. “Now.”
“Will I? Or what?” Kenzie held the robot out the window, dangling above the cars swishing through the slush in the other direction, enjoying it. “What you going to do about it, fetus?”
It was the eternal Kenzie question. Alex had been pondering it for years.
A couple of grades ahead of him, Kenzie had been a leering cloud on his horizon since primary school. Alex retained the sharp memory of their first encounter, a jeer in the playground, a stubby finger pointing down: “Look! It’s a wittle BABY-boy!”
When Alex had started there, he was small and young-looking even for a five-year-old. Closer to three, one teacher had murmured to another above his head. As it happened, she was wrong. In the same album from which he’d lifted the photograph of his mum and dad, there was a picture Alex particularly hated: himself at three, balanced bewildered on his mother’s knee, a frail, pale, underdeveloped little creature, gazing out with owlish black eyes, oversized round head still bald, save for a few fragile wisps of downy baby hair.
Eventually, though, the puzzled prophecies of the endless doctors his mum had taken him to during those years proved true. None could find anything wrong, all promised everything would be right in time, and at around nine, his body had taken a sudden stretch and caught up with his classmates. His mother’s constant worry gradually lifted and, with the older boy gone, his last two years at primary had been a happy, Kenzie-free zone.
But when he went to secondary school, he found Kenzie waiting. By now, the taunts—“It’s the Umbilical Kid!”—were meaningless. Nevertheless, Kenzie’s crew took it as gospel: he was a little freak. Whenever Kenzie rounded on him, Alex felt he was looking at that photograph of himself again. Or rather, still trapped staring out from that picture, still that strange, frozen little creature.
What you going to do about it?
Blood hammered in his ears. He felt his face burn, his hands tremble. He looked out at the spiteful staring faces swimming before him. Kenzie’s hand waggling the robot out the window.
“I’m not going to do anything, Kenzie,” he croaked. “All I’m saying is, I’d like you to give me that back, please.”
As he spoke, Alex dimly felt a small, odd sensation, like something shifting slightly in his mind. And something curious happened. Kenzie grew silent. Color drained from his already pale face. He suddenly looked very young, and very sad—lost, even. He pulled the robot back in and, to the bewilderment of his gang and everyone else watching, solemnly handed it to Alex, before sitting down without another word, staring at his knees.
Sitting, Alex pulled a tissue from his pocket and wiped Kenzie’s blood from the robot. He put the old toy back in his bag and zipped it shut.
The seats around remained silent for a spell, but, as the bus rumbled toward school, the usual morning buzz gradually grew again, although Kenzie’s seats remained uncharacteristically subdued. After a while, David leaned to Alex.
“What was that? Jedi mind magic?”
“I don’t know,” Alex replied.
“Big respect, man.” David whistled. “You need to teach me that stuff.”
“I don’t know,” Alex said again, looking out at the grimy white streets rolling past the window.
* * *
• • •
“TOLD YOU SHE’D love your essay, man.” David cracked a triumphant pop on his gum.
“Yeah, well, I wish she hadn’t loved it.”
; “She went nuts! She was making classes two years above us read it this afternoon.”
“And I wish she hadn’t done that, either.”
They were walking across the path worn into the grass toward the stop to catch the bus home.
“That bit about ‘the bleached angst,’” David continued. “Awesome. What does that even mean? I’m going to use that. When I form my band, I’m going to call it the Bleached Angst.” Then he said an odd thing. “Look out.”
Alex looked at him, then the world lurched on its axis and grew dark.
His jacket had been pulled savagely over his head from behind. His bag pressed against his face. He couldn’t see. Breathing was getting hard. He was pitching forward, hands tangled, helpless to break his fall. What felt like punches rained on his back on the way down. A muffled voice: “. . . bad enough we have to read Shakespeare, now she’s got us reading you?”
Sprawled on the grass, Alex felt a few misaimed kicks glance off his leg. He braced himself for more but none came. He rose to his knees and pulled his head free from his jacket.
The first thing he saw was Kenzie. Kenzie lying on the ground. Kenzie lying on the ground with all his friends standing around him. All of Kenzie’s friends looking up, looking angry but uncertain. And standing over Kenzie, a tall, elegant figure in a long dove-gray coat, a hand in a dove-gray glove holding a long black cane with a silver tip. The silver tip pressed hard to Kenzie’s throat.
“Oh, God,” Alex moaned. “Grandad.”
“Hello, Alex,” the old man said cheerily, ignoring the bulky fifteen-year-old gasping at his feet. “Just got into town, dropped in on your mother. Figured I’d come see if I could catch you, maybe have some fish and chips and a catch-up.”
“Gttthhhhhhh,” said Kenzie.
“Shall we do that?” Alex’s grandfather went on. “Fish and chips? And a catch-up? With mushy peas? I’ve not had decent chips for months.”
“Hsssssttthhh.”
“Grandad, could you let him go?”
“Let him . . . ? Oh, you mean this?” He stepped back, lifting his cane. “There you go, young man, up you pop.”
Kenzie hauled himself to his feet, rubbing his red neck.
“Big mistake, Grandad,” he seethed in a strangled voice. His staring friends crowded forward. “Don’t go walking around on your own. And, you”—he pointed at Alex—“I’ll see you later.”
He turned and started to walk away, but then he was lying on his back again, having tripped somehow over the old man’s cane. Alex’s grandfather leaned over him, pressing the stick gently to his chest. But not so gently, apparently, that Kenzie could move it.
“That’s no way to talk.” He grinned.
“I’m going to have the cops on you!” Kenzie spluttered.
“Let you in on a little secret, old chap.” Alex’s grandfather bowed lower, voice suddenly cold. “I am the cops, son. And I’ll go walking anywhere I please, on my own or not. And you had better hope that I don’t see you later, or even hear about you.”
He stood back, let Kenzie to his feet, and watched with a pleasant smile until he and his friends had sloped out of sight. “Now,” he said, “fish and chips?”
“Not for me,” David said, grinning, beginning a backward jog toward the bus stop. “Serious respect, man,” he called to Alex’s grandfather as he turned.
“Much appreciated.” The old man beamed.
“Why did you tell him you were a policeman?” Alex asked as they trudged between snowdrifts in the direction of the chip shop.
“Did I say that?”
“You know you did.”
“I have no idea why I would say that.” His grandfather frowned. A meager new snow had started, soft white flakes mingling with his crown of thick white hair. “What a strange thing to say.”
They walked in silence for a while.
“Uhm,” his grandfather said eventually. “Back there. Has that been happening a lot? Does your mother know?”
“It’s nothing,” Alex said, looking away. “Just a moron. Don’t have to worry Mum about it.”
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about Anne. Bravest person I know, your mother. Tougher than all of us put together.”
They trod on without speaking again, but Alex could sense the old man struggling to leave the subject alone.
“You know,” his grandad finally burst out, “people like that, you really should stand up to them. I mean, you were raised never to start a fight, I know that. But it doesn’t hurt to know how to finish one.”
“Grandad.” Alex concentrated on staring at the snow under his feet. “A kid in my year got stabbed in a fight last month. He’s still in the hospital. I know what you’re saying, but things have changed. It’s not like when you were young anymore. I can handle it. I just try to keep my head down. I’d rather not get involved.”
“Well, yes, but sometimes . . .” His grandfather stopped. “No. I suppose you’re right. Times have changed.” He smiled. “A wise old head on those young shoulders. Whereas I’m more the other way around.”
“That’s not such a bad way to be.” Alex smiled back, glad the subject was changing. “So long as I’m around to keep you out of trouble.”
In the restaurant, Alex munched a small portion of chips and watched happily as his grandfather demolished the biggest plate of battered haddock and chips the waitress could bring, unbuttoning first the jacket, then waistcoat of his immaculate suit to accommodate extra peas and buttered bread, washed down with pots of stewed tea.
“This stuff,” the old man mumbled through a full mouth, holding up the remains of a slice he’d been using to wipe his plate, “is extremely bad for you. White bread, and what’s worse, with butter. You should never, ever eat this. It’s far too late for me, of course. When I grew up, none of us knew any better. But you should take care of yourself. Never eat it.” He popped the morsel, dripping with pea juice and ketchup, into his mouth, making a contented noise that actually sounded like yum. “Quite ridiculously bad for you. Now, how’s your mother?”
“She’s doing okay.”
“Um-huh. And the Idiot?”
“Carl’s not that bad,” Alex replied.
“Ha! You were the one moaning about him to me!”
“That was months ago. That was the time he said, ‘Don’t you think you’re getting too old to be playing with toy robots?’”
“And what was it you said to him again?” His grandfather leaned in, grinning conspiratorially. Anticipation played about his face.
“I told him I didn’t play with them. And I told him a robot like one I bought for five pounds had sold for six hundred dollars on eBay. That seemed to change his mind about it.”
“No, no, that wasn’t it,” his grandfather said, petulant. “That wasn’t it at all. What was it you said when he said, ‘Don’t you think you’re getting too old . . .’?”
Alex sighed. “Okay, I said: ‘And don’t you think you’re getting too old to be wearing T-shirts of bands who are all half your age?’”
“Splendid!” his grandfather roared, clapping his hands. “Excellent!”
“Really, though. He’s okay. He’s okay to me, and he makes Mum laugh and he looks out for her. You should give him a chance.”
“I know,” his grandfather said, quietly now, gazing down at his empty plate with eyes looking much further down than that. He smiled back up. “Wise head. Come on, let’s get home.”
* * *
• • •
“YOU OKAY?” ALEX said as they stepped from the bus. His grandfather stood glancing around the street.
“Hmm?” The old man was looking off over his shoulder. He turned and peered ahead again, flashed a grin, and started walking. “Yes, fine. Oh, now tell me, how’s that new, well, that old robot I sent you?”
“See for yourself.” Alex roote
d in his bag and held the thing up.
His grandfather stopped, suddenly serious and cross.
“You had it out? You took it to school?”
“No. Well, yes, but—”
“Goodness’ sakes, Alex,” the old man snapped. “It’s not a toy. Well, of course, it is a toy, but you know what I mean.”
“No, but listen. I didn’t take it out with me. I mean, I didn’t mean to. It must have fallen into my bag, I just found it in there this morning.”
“Oh.” His grandfather pulled at his bottom lip as they resumed walking. “I see. I’m sorry. May I?” He held out a hand.
Alex gave him the robot and watched as he inspected it, turning it carefully, squinting as he held it up to the streetlights.
“Uh-huh. Well, no damage done.” He handed the toy back. “Maybe pay to have a look in your bag before you leave the house, though.”
“Yeah,” Alex said, pushing open the gate. “Mum was saying the same thing.”
“Clever woman, your mother.” His grandfather nodded, adding, as the door opened to reveal Carl wrestling out a bulging bag of recycling, “most of the time.”
A little later, they all sat at the kitchen table. Alex watched his grandfather decimate a plate of biscuits and pretend to be interested in what his mother and Carl were telling him about their plans to extend the room by four feet when they got the money together. He could tell there was something on the old man’s mind. When his grandad rubbed his chin, drummed his fingers, and said, “Well, now, so,” Alex knew he was getting around to it.
“I was thinking”—he beamed at Alex—“that old robot. It’s rather a curiosity. I can’t quite place it. Now, I have to pop over to France, and I have a friend there—a dealer, in Paris—who might be able to help identify where and when it comes from. Would you mind terribly if I took it with me for him to have a look at? I’d be sure to take care of it, old chap.
“I mean,” he continued, pulling at his ear, “ideally, I’d love for you to come along and see his place. He has wonderful pieces, has Harry, amazing old toys and gizmos. But, you know, can’t have you missing school. But next time, for certain—”