Bitter Sixteen

by Stefan Mohamed

  Our last kiss broke and I set her down. She was wearing one of the tops that we had bought yesterday. Yesterday? Was that it? I felt as though I’d lived an entire life since then, a whole new existence. Become a new person. Kloe’s lips moved and no sound came but they spelled out ‘I love you’ and I copied her, and she got on the train and the doors closed and she ran to the window and pressed her hands and nose against it, steaming it up with her tears and wiping it with her sleeves, and the train groaned and started to pull away and I chased it along the platform, waving and smiling.

  She’ll come back.

  I know.

  Time to go home and mope, yes? Then sleep?

  Almost.

  The street was everything that the Rogers’ estate wasn’t – grimy, dull and faded, stinking of homeless dogs, unfulfilled potential and sadness hidden behind ugly curtains. I walked up a path through a mouldy garden towards a small house coated in grubby whitewash, took a deep breath and knocked. There was a long silence, for a change, and the door opened a crack, revealing a wrinkled, suspicious eye. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do Carl and Louise live here?’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m . . . I’m a friend.’

  ‘You look like a student. Are you a journalist? If you’re even thinking about trying to interview them I’ll call the police!’

  ‘I just wanted to tell them something,’ I said. ‘I think it might . . . it might help.’

  Silence. The door opened a bit more and an old lady looked me up and down. She was like a squat baby who had been left in the bath too long, and she smelled faintly of marzipan. ‘What do you mean, help?’

  ‘I have some news,’ I said. ‘About . . . you know.’

  Her eyes widened and for a moment I thought she wasn’t going to let me in, but I saw something in her relent and she suddenly seemed much smaller. ‘They’re in the living room,’ she said. ‘Please don’t be long.’

  The hallway was dark and I could smell baking and cold tea. The old lady opened a door to her right and poked her head round. ‘Carl? Louise? There’s someone here who wants to speak to you.’

  A woman’s voice, so soft I couldn’t hear the words. ‘Don’t worry,’ said the lady. ‘It’s just a boy.’

  Just a boy. How long since that was true?

  ‘I’ll be right out here,’ said the lady. ‘Don’t you worry, loves.’ She turned back to me. ‘In you go. A few minutes, that’s all.’

  I entered a room with yellow walls, a brown and orange carpet and mustard furniture. An old TV set stood in the corner, silently playing some daytime soap opera or other, with the subtitles on. Louise and Carl were sitting side-by-side on a sofa. They were recognisable, but it was as though a short-sighted artist had made statues of them out of ash based on a very rough drawing. Louise’s youthful beauty had faded, her face was lined, her hair was lank and had no colour to it, and she was very thin. Carl was even worse. At least Louise’s eyes had some semblance of life behind them; his were dead in their sockets, focused on nothing. His face was drawn and haunted and he hunched as though his skeletal body had never been used. He looked so old, much older than his older sister.

  ‘Who are you?’ said Louise. Her voice was a whisper, a drowning lily pad in a frozen pond.

  ‘My name is Stanly,’ I said. ‘I came to tell you . . . I thought you should know . . .’ I took a deep breath. Louise looked almost interested. Carl’s eyes hadn’t moved. ‘I thought you should know that he’s dead,’ I said. ‘Smiley Joe is dead.’

  It took a long time to sink in. Finally Louise’s eyes glassed over and she began to weep silently, and at the same time she smiled, probably for the first time in years, and some of her old beauty returned to her face, colour blossoming triumphantly on her cheeks. Carl looked up at me and the haunted expression broke slightly, revealing the promise of something better behind it, something optimistic. He didn’t smile but he opened his mouth, and Sharon’s voice echoed in my head. Carl didn’t speak and he hasn’t since. Excitement flared in my stomach as he moistened his lips and then, for the first time in so many years, words emerged.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  THE NEXT MORNING. Just after four. Wide shot of the Heron Tower. Zoom, focus. Me, sitting on the parapet, coat wrapped around me, legs dangling over vast, full emptiness. It was quiet, or as quiet as London could be, and the barest sliver of gold and pink was beginning to glow on the horizon.

  Daryl rested his chin on the ledge next to me. ‘So you’re here to stay?’

  I nodded.

  ‘They’ll still be around. The Angel Group. They’ll stay on you.’

  ‘You’ll make sure of that, I suppose.’ It was unkind, and I felt bad for saying it, but I wanted him to know that things were not OK between us. Almost as much as I wanted to say that I forgave him.

  ‘No. I know where my loyalties lie.’ He looked up at me. ‘Do you?’

  I didn’t say anything. There were plenty of things I could have said, plenty that I wanted to say, but it felt more natural to let yet another of Stanly’s legendary awkward silences spool out. Daryl seemed to take the hint and nodded. ‘So, where do we stand?’

  ‘Me and you?’ I said. Together. That’s where we should be standing. ‘For now, unless you get some new information that I might need, we stand a long way apart.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ More silence. I felt Daryl building up to say something else and cut him off.

  ‘You’ll be all right on your own?’ I asked. Just say it’s fine. Say it’s all OK, and that we can talk it through and cry and share our feelings and it’ll all be fixed. Say he’s your best friend, and that all is forgiven. Tell him to come back to Connor and Sharon’s.

  ‘I’m sure I can find some chatty stoner to give me a ball and biscuit to call my own,’ said the dog. ‘I’ll be all right. I’m more concerned about you, to be honest.’

  ‘I can handle whatever they throw at me.’

  ‘And if they go near Tara?’ I still hadn’t told the others that she was my daughter. I hadn’t told anyone. To all intents and purposes she was just my sort-of-adopted little sister.

  ‘Then I’ll fight them,’ I said. ‘And I’ll win.’ It sounded almost as badass out loud as it sounded in my head, while also sounding twice as ridiculous, somehow. It was Daryl, though, so it didn’t matter. The sun started to rise, painting the slumbering sky with flashing strokes of brilliant red, and I stood up, balancing on the parapet. The height was dizzying, but I wasn’t worried. I was sure I’d been scared of heights at one point.

  Not any more.

  Plenty of new stuff to be scared of now.

  Daryl laughed. ‘What are you sniggering at?’ I said.

  ‘You’re actually going to jump off the building and fly away, aren’t you?’

  Now I couldn’t help smiling. ‘I’m a superhero now,’ I said, pulling my hood up. ‘That’s what we do.’

  And I jumped off the building, fell into flight and began the first dawn patrol of the city.

  My city.

  THE END

  Acknowledgements

  I CLAIM SOLE RESPONSIBILITY for this book and its publication. Any and all successes can be attributed to me and me only. I had no help from anyone. This book is a triumph of individualism.

  Not really.

  First, my indomitable (and possibly superpowered) agent, Ben Illis, without whom I would only be writing these acknowledgements in my mind while pouring cheap whisky over myself in some gutter somewhere. His endless support and encouragement have kept me going through rejections, sulks and crises of confidence, and his astute feedback and constructive criticism have been invaluable in moulding this book from a piece of coal with potential to the much more awesome piece of coal you now hold in your hands.

  To Jen and Chris at Salt, I write THANK YOU
on the sky in huge red letters for, y’know, agreeing to publish the thing, and for being so supportive throughout a pretty daunting process. The feeling of finding a publisher who gets what you’re trying to do – and who isn’t going to say ‘yeah we like it but could Stanly be a twelve-year-old football player to appeal to that demographic, and could he have an older sister who’s a vampire, and maybe Daryl could be a labrador, or a cat, and also could he not talk’ – is hard to describe.

  To Peter Stead, Cerys Matthews and everyone else involved with the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Sony Reader Award – without that amazing boost to the book’s profile (and my own confidence) these last few years would have unfolded very differently.

  To the friends who read the very first scrappy draft and said that they liked it – Martin and Kate et al, I’m looking at y’all – and to my friends in general for being massively supportive and encouraging while simultaneously keeping me grounded with endless piss-taking.

  To Mrs Smith and Mr Evans, for nurturing and educating and encouraging. The world needs more teachers like you.

  To my family, for all the love and support. And for not telling the authorities about my telekinesis.

  To my parents, for everything. I could write a whole other book on this subject.

  To Catherine, because without you none of this would be anywhere near as much fun. Also see above re: pouring cheap whisky over myself in some gutter somewhere.

  And finally to anyone who does me the honour of reading this book. ’Cos that’s what books are for.