Fifteen Bones

by R. J. Morgan

  “What choice do I have?” She pulled her braids further over her face.

  I reached out for her. “What does that mean?” But she ran and I knew I wouldn’t be able to catch her. I would never, ever be able to catch her.

  I went to registration and all four morning classes. In biology we had a supply teacher but I stayed put and asked the stick thin white girl next to me if I could borrow her book to catch up. In one school year she had written:

  Wednesday 3rd September

  Pla

  BRING dem SOMALI BOYZ

  BAG O MAN

  4October

  Gluse is the

  %

  SKANK!

  SKANXXX! Xxxxo

  lol.

  At lunchtime Kane took me to the canteen and shared a box of jerk chicken with me, and I told him about Isaac.

  “I didn’t know he died,” Kane said. “What a tragedy. That’s rough, mate.”

  “Who died?” Bash said as he sat down next to us.

  “Jake’s best friend from primary school. He was well funny. I didn’t know.”

  “When?” Bash said.

  “Four years ago?”

  “You look like you’re grieving, to be fair,” Bash said.

  “Weight of the world, innit,” Kane said. “When my cousin’s friend died, my cousin went mad.”

  “It was her fault though,” Bash said.

  Kane paused. “It weren’t her fault though.”

  “It was her fault though,” Bash said.

  “It weren’t her fault though,” Kane said.

  “It was her fault though.”

  “It weren’t her fault though.”

  “A bit.”

  “Yeah, a bit.” Kane relaxed. “I mean … she was driving, yeah … but … but it was that Nicky – Nicky died – who got them tanked in the first place. So…”

  “That’s awful,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, she can’t walk or wipe her arse no more, and she talks like she’s pissed, so that’s punishment enough.”

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “You were there?” Kane asked me. “When…”

  I nodded.

  “That’s rough,” Kane said. “That’s rough. Seeing stuff. My cousin Taze saw his mate OD, swear down. He’s mash up because of it.”

  “Is he the one that beat up that kid in Burger King?” Bash said.

  “Yeah. This kid called him a Paki so my cousin smashed his face into a table. Broke his nose and teeth.”

  “Double Whopper,” I said.

  They laughed.

  “You feel a bit better then?”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry about …”

  “’Allow it,” Kane said with a dismissive wave of his hand as he cleared his mess away and headed out. “Looks like it’s all done with now anyway.”

  I followed him out of the canteen, desperate to ask what he meant and if he knew what was going to happen tonight. But I remembered my promise to Robin, and kept my mouth shut as we climbed the stairs to English.

  A huge banner had been placed over the wall I had destroyed:

  Do not go gentle into that good night.

  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  “Welcome to Pip-Pop Day, everyone!” Miss Price said.

  “How are you doing?” she asked me.

  “Yes, fine,” I said.

  “What happened to the girl next door?”

  “She’s fine. She’s in my house now,” I said, suddenly desperate to talk to someone about it, but the rabble piled in and Miss Price had to deal with them.

  “OK!” Miss Price enthused. “Everyone ready for Pip-Pop Day?”

  There was a murmur.

  “I said, is everyone ready for Pip-Pop Day?”

  Everyone cheered.

  “Boo,” Bash said in a little voice, and everyone laughed. I laughed with them.

  Miss Price had us do a breathing exercise where we took long breaths in and out until we felt relaxed. She explained that what was said in this room would stay in the room. She asked us who would like to read a poem and no one volunteered.

  “Bash? Would you like to read your poem?”

  Bash shifted in his seat. “None of you lot laugh,” he warned. “It’s not clever or funny or anything.”

  There was an “Ooooooh” from the room.

  “I should have written a funny one,” he said, opening his little black notebook.

  “READ!” we all said.

  “It’s not…” He fussed with his tie.

  “Get on with it!” Sam yelled.

  “Are You a Supply Teacher, Sir?

  by Mohammed Bashir

  ‘Are you a supply teacher, sir?’

  ‘Yes,’ he smiled, dead to me.

  ‘Welcome to biology.

  Your teacher is off.

  She tried her best but the stress

  Of you lot got to her.’

  This room could be filled

  With doctors and nurses,

  Radiographers and researchers,

  And Nobel Prize winners,

  With saviours of blood,

  And experts on brains.

  She can imagine

  the cure for famine.

  She could make the icecaps freeze.

  He could sign decrees to save the trees.

  She could ask the world: if the drought’s in Africa

  Why’re the pumps we make over here not made over

  there?

  This vanishes in this pit

  Of mess and poverty and sloth.

  ‘Are you a supply teacher?’ we sneer.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Our supply is cut off.’”

  “Innit, though,” Mo said, and everyone agreed. “That was wicked, man.”

  “That was excellent, Bash,” Miss Price said.

  “Bloody supply teachers, man,” Raizer said.

  “That weren’t the point of the poem,” Clarissa said.

  Her turn. “This is about my … dad,” she said with a cheeky twist to her mouth.

  “Oooooh!”

  “Fit!”

  “Peng!”

  “Chung!”

  “Buff, man. Big man ting.”

  “Biiiig maaaan tiiiing!”

  “Shut up, man,” Clarissa said.

  “Boo!” Bash said.

  “Get on with it,” Raizer said. The laughter was enough to lift the mood and Clarissa was off:

  “Queen

  by Clarissa Simone Neale

  When I say Jamaican, you say queen.

  Jamaican

  ‘Queen!’

  Jamaican

  Queen!’

  I don’t care me dad’s from Cyprus Park,

  ’Cos he’s got more soul than Clark’s

  And more wrap than Smith’s

  And more fizz and energy

  Than a truckload of Pepsi.

  He richer than the Ivy.

  He’s bright white he right love me.

  It don’t matter to me

  that me mummy crossed a sea

  from Jamaican sands,

  I’m both at the same time. I ain’t no 50 Cent. I’m two hundred per cent.

  I’m black and white like old movies about Egyptian queens.

  And I have dreams.

  Black and white drama

  Like Barack Obam-AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

  There was belting applause. Clarissa put her head in her hands. She had a big smile on her face.

  No one wanted to follow that. Kane grudgingly accepted but stayed seated as the class cheered him on. He looked suddenly upset. Quickly and in a whispery voice he read:

  “Puppet


  by Kane Rajmansingh

  Every day I wake up,

  And get this puppet out its box.

  I dress it in my uniform,

  And send it out the door.

  I send it round the school and make it talk.

  It laughs at the right time, snarls at the right time.

  It’s rude and offensive and teases too much.

  The puppet comes home in one piece.

  I sigh with relief.

  But I’m lonely and wishing I was free.”

  There was silence.

  “Bait, man,” Sean said and everyone laughed.

  I forced my eyes away from Kane. I wasn’t happy, but at least I didn’t have to do that. It felt strange. I felt sick, but good sick. He stopped and smiled at me. I held up my phone. He posed. I took a picture of him.

  Miss Price’s big, expectant eyes turned to me. I opened my grey notebook. I stood up and the class was silent.

  “This is called ‘Once’ and it’s about … well … it…” My voice felt distant. I stopped and glanced at Bash’s generous face, his eager eyes.

  “Boo,” Bash said softly and everyone laughed, so I read.

  “Once

  Once it seemed that in this world

  I needed no one else.

  You were once my better half,

  My sun, my second self.

  Once the wake of Sunday rain

  Wouldn’t change my mood,

  In the peace of knowing I had

  that day, each day, with you.

  But no season seems like summer now.

  No sun could light the day.

  Because at once my life was lost,

  When yours was stole away.”

  I looked up, terrified they would laugh because tears had filled my eyes. They weren’t laughing: they looked sad, compassionate. I looked into Kane’s forgiving eyes and at Clarissa twisting her mouth in an effort not to cry. I glanced at the blank page.

  “Now it seems broken trees

  Still reach for the sky

  In their dreams, of blooming leaves

  They have to say goodbye.”

  No one spoke. Miss Price gave a dainty clap and everyone joined in.

  “It was like …” Nickola said, clicking her fingers, “oh, it was like that poem we done it at my last school. What’s it called…”

  “‘Perhaps’,” I said, “by, um… Miss, who wrote the poem ‘Perhaps’? It was in the war poetry anthology?” I couldn’t believe my brain wouldn’t allow me to see her name. I had read that poem hundreds of times.

  “Ooh, I’m not quite sure,” Miss Price said. “We can look it up.” She tapped on her computer. “Vera …” she peered closer, “Brittain.”

  “That’s it,” I said.

  “Who wrote that?” Nickola pointed at the Pip-Pop banner.

  “Does anyone know?” Miss Price said.

  I put my hand up.

  “Jake?”

  “Yeats,” I said.

  “Lovely, well done.”

  “No,” I corrected myself, distracted. “I mean, Dylan Thomas, sorry. Yeats is the other one.”

  “What other one?” Miss Price said.

  “Miss, who wrote that?” interrupted Clarissa, pointing at the wall.

  “Have you only just noticed that?” Miss Price laughed. “Does anyone know?”

  I said nothing.

  Miss Price looked desperately at me. “No one? I think it’s Oscar Wilde.”

  Wrong.

  “It’s his most famous quote.”

  Wrong again.

  The noise fell away until I heard only my own heart. I looked up, my eyes wide.

  Miss Price beneath her careful calligraphy:

  There is another world, but it is in this one.

  I looked again at her muscled shoulders, her calm demeanour, her constant questions about local gang culture, her requests for letters on thoughts and feelings. I thought of her restraining Darscall, of how quickly the paramedics came when I fainted, of her comforting me as if unburdened by oaths and puritanical guidelines. Of – my eyes widened – of her turning up at my house after I’d changed my address on the school system. Of her teaching stuff that wasn’t in the exam. Of a teacher who didn’t know how to calibrate a white board. Of her saying she had actually bothered to read my transcript. Of the drugs mysteriously disappearing from my locker as the police searched for them. Of people being arrested. Of Cattle Rise having an informant. I looked at this room – so carefully decorated, so different to the other rooms – and back to Miss Price. Something had always bothered me about the way she stood, leaning forward, with her hands behind her back. Police. “Oh. My. God,” I said.

  “Sorry, Jake?”

  “N … nothing,” I said as I fumbled for my phone.

  “I really did love your poem,” she said.

  “Thanks,” I managed as my red fingers texted Robin. The police must be waiting for the CRK tonight. Why else would they be here?

  POLICE. DON’T GO. THEY KNOW.

  Out in the corridor I searched on my phone for Bettina’s pizza place. Suddenly I stopped dead, staring at the tiny screen, the kids flooding past me like a river around a stone, because the picture on the news feed was that of a burned-out shell and of police appealing for witnesses.

  Robin, I thought with horror, what have you done?

  “The number you have called has not been recognized.”

  I pocketed my phone and broke into a jog. I thought of running with the baby birds for all those miles, one hundred calories per mile, or eighty-six at my weight. I thought of walking with Isaac, the endless treasure hunt. I remembered moving to Acton and walking the streets by myself, as I had never done before. I thought of walking the boulevards of Paris with Robin.

  I dialled again and got a new message: “The telephone number you are dialling has been switched off. Goodbye.”

  Once I’d passed the park, I started running. I liked the way my heels felt as they hit the pavement, and the way that light thud loosened my shoulder blades and popped my spine. I hit the ground harder, testing my pelvis, my left femur, quietly impressed by its stamina.

  I took my key out of my bag before reaching Rancome Road and kept it balled in my fist. On the doorstep I checked for movement in the Toad House, terrified the Beast would recognize me. I opened the door and ran inside.

  A smash came from the kitchen, then another, and I panicked before I recognized the yell that came with each throw.

  “Mum?” I said as I went to the kitchen.

  She spun around. Her face was red and harried. A madness had come about her. Her hair, usually perfect, had wormed up into a wiry mess. She grabbed my shoulders and it bloody hurt because my shoulder bones are like those things they use to squeeze the juice out of lemons; if you touch them, they liquefy my flesh. I yelled in pain and twisted out of her grip.

  “What the hell happened to the window upstairs?”

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “Jake, listen to me, this is very, very important. Have you touched anything in this house?”

  “No.”

  “And you haven’t brought anything in? You haven’t made any mess? I’m not cleaning up new mess!”

  “No. Stop yelling. Your fillers will slip.”

  “Christ, Jake, will you listen to me and do what I ask for once in your life.”

  “Listen to what?”

  “Your grandfather – he left us money, Jake. A lot of money. And not exactly money that you can … declare, OK? And we have to find it. Mummy has to find it.”

  The word made my stomach churn. “There’s no money here, Mum. Look at it. He ate corned beef every day. He had no help.”

  “He had thousands, Jake, hundreds of thousands.” She worked the pan
els of the kitchen cabinet loose with her bare hands. “And we have to find it. We need that money.”

  “Well, it’s either gone or it’s been stolen, Mum. You could break into this house faster than it would take most people to find a key.”

  “I know it’s here!” she screamed.

  “Maybe you should have visited him once in a while,” I said. “Maybe he would have told you.”

  She chucked a cabinet door like a discus and, fair play, it flew through the open door into the centre of the skip.

  “Three points,” I said quietly.

  “Three points,” Mother said, her mouth growing fat with misery. “When I was your age, all the girls wanted to be Darcey Bussell or Madonna. I wanted to be Michael Jordan.”

  “How did that go?”

  “Can’t tell us apart, can you?”

  I stifled a laugh and climbed the stairs.

  Mother followed me, her heels clacking off every surface, holding a small package wrapped in blue paper. She handed it to me on the stairs. “Take it,” she said.

  “Mum, I haven’t got time.”

  Her forehead creased down the middle and this seemed to make her eyes even larger. I took the package and opened it, my cold fingers faltering on the tape. Inside was a flat white box. I opened it and pulled out a silver photo frame, wrapped in tissue paper. My breathing quickened. I knew from the smallest corner of colour what was on the photograph.

  He’s smiling, I’m laughing.

  “It’s a new frame,” Mum said. “Look, there’s the box.”

  “I like it,” I said. My voice was small. I ran my thumb down the frame.

  “I miss him,” she said, “and I miss you with him. I should have been there.”

  “There’s nothing you could have done,” I said. “There’s nothing anyone could have done.”

  “But you blame me. It’s like you hate me.”

  “I don’t blame you. No one is to blame. Even that idiot driving. It was no one’s fault. It was just a terrible thing.”

  Mother looked at me and ran her crucifix along its chain.

  “What?” I asked.