Bitter Sixteen

by Stefan Mohamed

  ‘He told me there was more he wanted to say,’ I said. ‘He just didn’t want to say it over the phone is all. Look, I may not have spoken to him in years, but I remember quite clearly how he was always worried about something. There was always something on his mind, there was always a subtext and there was always something he wasn’t telling you. That’s just the way he is.’

  Daryl didn’t answer for a minute. Then he looked at me. ‘Sixteen?’

  I nodded. ‘What about . . . oh. Sixteen . . . you don’t think —’

  ‘I think,’ said Daryl.

  It seemed so obvious now I thought about it. ‘But . . . why wouldn’t he have said anything?’

  ‘You know him better than I do,’ said Daryl. ‘I’m just saying, that’s all. It’s not like I’ve written the definitive article.’

  ‘I should call him,’ I said.

  ‘Did you get his number?’

  ‘Nope. I’ll ask Mum.’

  My father was out, and my mother was sitting at the table doing a crossword. She looked up. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Um . . . do you have Eddie’s phone number?’

  ‘Eddie?’

  ‘My cousin. Your nephew.’

  Her expression changed completely. Only a few muscles moved, but where a moment ago there had been mild interest there was now deep concern. ‘What do you want his number for?’

  ‘To ring him with.’

  ‘I . . . we don’t have it.’

  ‘We must have it.’ I grabbed one of the six dozen or so phone books from the shelf and started to flick through it. ‘Is it in here?’

  ‘Why do you want to talk to him?’

  ‘Well . . . I wanted to talk to him about my guitar. I think he used to play . . .’

  ‘The clarinet,’ she said. ‘He used to play the clarinet . . . maybe he still does, I don’t know. But you’ll have to do a lot better than that.’

  ‘I just want to talk to him!’ I said. ‘He’s my cousin! What’s wrong with me wanting to talk to my cousin?’

  ‘Because I don’t want you associating with him!’ she yelled.

  I was taken aback. My mum rarely shouted at me. We both looked away and there was a fairly awkward silence. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s just . . . he’s a bad influence. He’s not . . . he’s a troubled boy.’

  ‘He’s not a boy. And when did you last speak to him anyway?’

  ‘What does that have to do with anything?’

  ‘When?’

  She sighed angrily. ‘Oh . . . not long after he left.’

  ‘He left when he was sixteen! That’s eight fu . . .’ I thought better of it. ‘Eight years ago!’

  ‘He really hurt your father,’ she said.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Stanly!’

  ‘He doesn’t give two shits about me, why should I care about him?’

  She was getting really angry now. ‘Stanly! Watch your language and don’t you dare speak about your father like that —’

  ‘How come you’re allowed to? I’m sixteen years old and I don’t have freedom of speech?’ Yeesh. Way to not sound sixteen.

  ‘Of course you do! You just . . . of course your father cares about you! Your birthday, he . . .’

  ‘Letting me have the guitar was your idea. I’ll bet it was.’

  She looked mutinously at the floor and spoke in a low voice. ‘Edward grew up with a father and no mother. He was always a troubled child. When your uncle died, Frank tried to help Edward but he wouldn’t hear of it. He left after an argument and set up home in a city that his father hated, hundreds of miles away. He cut himself off and for all we knew he could have been dead!’

  ‘But he’s not!’ I said, my own anger rising like the mercury in a thermometer. ‘He’s not dead! He called me last night!’

  ‘He what?’

  ‘He phoned last night and I spoke to him. He wished me happy birthday. We didn’t talk for very long and I didn’t get his number so I wanted to call him. There! He’s fine!’

  My mother sat down. There was another very long pause. My house was a house of pauses. Finally she said, ‘It’s in the address book with the marmalade cat on the front.’

  I took the book. ‘If you had his number why didn’t you just call him?’

  She didn’t look at me, she just said, ‘You know how stubborn your father can be.’

  I called Eddie and he picked up after nearly twenty rings. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Eddie? It’s Stanly.’

  ‘Oh! Hi, Stanly. You OK?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine. I just . . . your call was a bit confusing.’

  ‘Yeah . . . I’m sorry about that. I just . . . you know. You never know who’s listening!’ He said it like a joke, but I knew it wasn’t.

  ‘Hmm. So when can we have this conversation you can’t seem to bring yourself to have?’

  ‘We can have as many conversations as you like if you come to London.’

  ‘Why are you so desperate to have me there?’ I asked.

  I could hear him moving about as he talked. ‘Do you really think that someone with your abilities belongs in a little town like Tref-y-Celwyn? I know I got sick of it pretty fast.’

  Another power chord of realisation. ‘You have powers too, don’t you?’

  ‘C’est possible.’

  ‘You’re taking the piss.’

  ‘Something you’re also pretty good at, if I remember correctly. You really should come down. You’d be good company.’

  He sounded like he was pouring himself a drink. His voice changed slightly, as though he was holding the phone between ear and shoulder. ‘Look, Stanly. I know I haven’t spoken to you for years. I call up out of the blue inviting you to London. It’s got to mess with your head, I’m sorry. And maybe you wouldn’t be safe if you came down here, maybe it’s better for you up there, but also maybe safe isn’t what you need, maybe you need to be tested and . . . listen to me rambling. Sorry.’

  ‘You keep apologising. You don’t need to.’

  He laughed. ‘Yeah. I’m sorr . . . I mean, yeah.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I just knew,’ he said.

  Silence.

  ‘You still there?’ he said.

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Don’t come immediately. Come when you’re ready, if you decide you want to. I know your parents don’t like me all that much . . .’

  ‘Maybe if you spoke to them —’

  ‘No.’ He was insistent. ‘No, I couldn’t. Not after all the . . . I couldn’t. Just . . . remember my offer, OK?’

  ‘Can I have your address?’

  ‘Yeah. Got a pen and paper?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  I wrote down his address. ‘Great. Thanks. You may be seeing me . . . but not soon. I have commitments.’

  ‘Commitments?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m Romeo.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘In the school play.’

  ‘Ah, I see. Nice one.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Well, good luck. Take it easy.’

  He hung up and I looked at Daryl, who put his head on one side. ‘Curious?’ he asked.

  ‘As a fox,’ I said.

  Chapter Five

  I WALKED ALONG AN uneven stone path suspended between two cliffs. The sky was dark purple and laced with spiders’ legs of lightning, the air heavy, sulphuric. Somewhere, someone was singing.

  I reached the end of the path. A door was set into the rock, marked with some arcane inscription. Speak friend and enter. I looked up, kicked off and flew up to the peak of the cliff, where Ben King was juggling fruit and singing to a smiling girl in a lace coffin. I roared at him and we fought with our brains, drawing blood without touching, striking with false memories and concentrated ang
er. I quickly gained the upper hand, picked him up and hurled him over the edge, and as I watched him plummet into nothingness I realised that I was standing on a massive pile of bones: skulls, legs, arms, ribs, a tower of skeletons. I raised my hands to the reddening sky and suddenly there was blood pouring out from under my feet and cascading down the tower of bones and —

  I sat up, shaking, and looked at the clock. Three in the morning. I was wide awake and knew I wouldn’t sleep again. Daryl was sleeping peacefully at the end of the bed, and I got up as quietly as I could and got dressed. As I was lacing up my shoes I heard the dog murmur groggily. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Going out,’ I said. ‘I need air. And I’m going to practise.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Do you want to come?’

  He shook his head. ‘Too sleepy. A proper training session and I’m too tired to enjoy it. You’re a dick.’

  ‘Love you too.’ I opened the window. ‘Sleep well.’

  He grunted.

  My house was three storeys tall, and my bedroom was on the top floor. I stood on the outside sill, shut the window as far as I could and looked across to the huge tree that faced my window. I took a deep breath . . . can’t balls this up, can’t . . . and kicked off from the sill, spun, planted both feet on the trunk of the tree and ran vertically downwards. I used the tree as a springboard, flew across, spun and continued the run on the wall of the house. Just as I was congratulating myself on a perfect, graceful exit I lost balance and hit the pavement. Thud. I swore and wondered whether my parents might have heard . . . but no. They wouldn’t have. They both snored like buffalo.

  I ran along the road, bouncing from one side to the other, glad that I was pretty much definitely not going to bump into anyone in this sleepy-ass town at this time of night. It wasn’t all graceful, and occasionally I slipped and almost impaled myself on fences and gates, but I was rapidly becoming much more comfortable with my powers. I could feel it inside, deep down. Gravity was only there in an advisory capacity now. I ran along walls and flew as much as I could – definitely flying now, not floating, ha ha – and when I reached the end of the road I touched down slowly and perfectly. I ran across the bridge and sprang over to the pub by the train station, running along the wall, resisting the urge to whoop and laugh, and channelling the energy I had suddenly gained I performed a huge leap, flew about forty feet – shiiiiiiiiiiiit! – and landed on the roof of Tref-y-Celwyn Tyre Supplies.

  Crouched like a gargoyle, silhouetted against the moon, I could see the whole town sleeping under dull orange and spectral silver. My playground. I laughed and began my dance again, with the wind as my partner. I reached the primary school where two cats were facing off, their backs arched and their tails fluffed up like toilet brushes. I lifted them both up just by looking and deposited them on opposite sides of a fence where they continued hissing at each other for about ten seconds. Then they left, as if bored. Whether they even noticed what I’d done was academic. I’d done it. Lifted the creatures with my mind. This was the stuff.

  I flew up the high street, leaping ten feet at a time, and ran straight to the clock tower. I ran and I ran and then I leapt, and my feet hit the tower and I ran up as far as I could physically propel myself and then backflipped. Everything was in slow motion, an invisible camera panning around me, three hundred and sixty degrees. It was ecstasy, total control, total freedom, and Mr Jones The Careers Adviser’s words came back to me. Is there any upper limit to these powers? Right now, it didn’t seem like there could be . . . but even if there was, this would be enough for me. I landed perfectly and blew a kiss to the moon.

  It was starting to get light when I got home. I ran up the wall, opening the window with my mind as I went, and slid silently in. Daryl didn’t stir as I undressed and got back into bed. I could grab about three hours of sleep . . . that is if I could . . . could . . . (yawns) . . .

  Time for another montage. You can choose the music. Days shifted imperceptibly into weeks, and then months, and for the remainder of September, the whole of October and about half of November I spent my nights flying and my days working. Every Monday night the cast of Romeo and Juliet stayed after school for an hour and a half, and by the end of October I had learnt all of my words. It was impossible, I was doing everything, surviving on about four hours of sleep a night, but Daryl said that the more I did the more I’d be able to do, which was easy for him to say ’cos he did bugger all, but turned out to be true. The play was a dream. I’d actually started some of my coursework (none of it was close to being finished, but whatchyagonnado?). My powers were developing at a rate that both thrilled and scared me, although it was good fear.

  And it wasn’t just the flying. The telekinesis, or whatever it was, was getting better. I stopped people from falling over, I stopped balls from breaking windows, I did minor-league good deeds that were nonetheless extremely fulfilling, considering the fact that before Saturday the twenty-fourth of September I hadn’t given much of a shit about anybody except myself. I did also indulge my dickish side, but I justified it to myself, saying that constantly messing with the blinds in Mr Jones Chemistry’s class (as opposed to Mr Jones Careers or Mr Jones PE) was basically a victimless crime, as was slowly de-tuning our happy-clappy RE teacher Mr Nelson’s guitar as he tried to teach us Christian values through the medium of appalling songs. Plus, it helped with precision. As did messing with the headmaster’s hymn book during assembly so that he kept losing his place. And re-directing balls during PE so that they hit people I didn’t like. And so on.

  My helping-the-helpless act didn’t go quite so well, stretching only to seeing off some kids who were bullying some smaller kids, and I didn’t even use my powers for that, just the badass feeling that came with them. It worked surprisingly well, and I actually became semi-popular for a while. People called me Romeo in the corridor, which was kind of annoying but kind of not, and less popular kids in the lower years said hi to me when they saw me, because I’d helped them. That bit was pretty good. In fact, I was starting to find that acting like a normal person and being a more-cynical-than-thou loner weren’t mutually exclusive, as I’d always thought they were.

  One Monday in mid-November, I stayed after school to rehearse. The girl playing Juliet was called Kloe, and she wasn’t in my Drama group, although we were in the same year. She was slightly taller than me and very pretty, with long chestnut hair that shone like hair from a shampoo advert (really), and her brown eyes were always full of humour. She was really nice, which made working with her easy, and made the romantic bits much less embarrassing and awkward than they might have been.

  Tonight we stayed an extra half an hour to do the balcony scene, which wasn’t actually going to involve the traditional balcony. Instead the two of us were going to stand on either side of a wall facing away from one another and talking, not actually seeing each other for the whole scene. Mrs Bush, who was one of the English teachers, had been assigned to prompt and after watching this scene for the first time asked whether the wall was representative of the psychological barrier of the feud. Miss Stevenson said yes, but I think it was mainly because it would have been too arduous to build a balcony.

  Kloe’s mum picked her up at six o’clock. I knew that my dad would be late – I could time it pretty much to the minute – so I went to the high street to get a drink. As I walked back down the alley towards the school, drinking my can of Shloer (or the speech impediment drink as my mother called it), four people stepped out of the darkness, two in front of me and two behind.

  Zach and George were in front, with two Sams flanking me. I was trapped, and my stomach lurched because I’d not actually been in a situation like this before, but I made sure it didn’t show. No sweat, yeah? I finished my drink, threw the can into a conveniently-placed skip and wiped my mouth, smiling pleasantly. ‘Hiya, fellas.’

  Zach walked forwards and looked me in the eyes. ‘I don’t like you,’ he sai
d.

  ‘Really?’ I said. ‘Why’s that, then?’

  One of the Sams clipped me around the ear. ‘Fucking shut up, gay boy.’

  Gay. The best insult any of them can come up with. Gay boy, bender, poofter, faggot, blah blah to the power of blah squared. I don’t need to use the word pathetic, it automatically lends itself. I could feel myself getting angry. These people thought they had the right to make other people’s lives miserable. They thought they mattered more, that their pathetic primitive tribal need to assert dominance superseded their victims’ right to not be screwed with on a daily basis. They couldn’t comprehend the sometimes irreparable damage that they caused to some kids, even after all of the stories about kids hanging themselves and overdosing, they still persisted. I can almost sympathise with kids who just cut out the middleman and take out all the bullies with a semiautomatic. I’m at pains to say that I don’t condone it, but I can appreciate the cumulative affect of daily torment, for those with thinner skins than mine.

  ‘You’re a freak,’ said Zach. ‘Are you Jewish?’

  I swear I’m not making this up. I shook my head. ‘Nope. Are you?’

  A slap around the head from one of the Sams.

  ‘Course I’m fucking not,’ said Zach. He looked around conspiratorially. ‘Hey, Romeo. Want to hear a joke?’

  ‘Not really.’

  Zach shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’ He was still smiling, but I could sense his rather small mind working furiously, trying to think of something witty or original. Finally he asked how my mum was. Yeah, really.

  ‘Fine,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Zach, looking around at his cohorts and grinning proudly. ‘She was pretty fine last night.’ They all laughed.

  Wow, I thought. This is . . . really embarrassing. ‘Did you rehearse this whole thing?’ I said. ‘’Cos I think your script could have done with a couple more drafts.’

  ‘Shut up, you drama poof,’ said one of Zach’s minions. Ooh, good one.

  I imagined meeting Zach for a battle in a Gothic temple. Me with my guitar, him carrying a broadsword. Zach wearing black, me wearing red. He looks at my guitar and snorts: ‘What are you going to do? Power chord me to death?’