“You’re my son,” she says to me. “Sometimes, at night, when I am alone, I cry because of how things are. Craig made me afraid when they took him. I didn’t want to love you. Maybe they would take you too.”
She puts her arms out to try and hug me, but I don’t want her to. I want her to say sorry. I don’t want her to love me. I don’t want her to say that. I am sorry. I am sorry I made her do all the bad things to me. I can't keep the crying away. I didn’t mean to make my mum and dad do lots of bad things to me. I am sorry about it all.
She wants to hug me, but I can't let her. I don’t want her to touch me. I am bad and she is crying very hard. She cries loud. I tell her I am sorry. “I have to go to Michelle’s,” I say to her. I know it is Sunday and I have school tomorrow, but I have to go. She can't hug me. She can't love me.
She can't.
Sixty Nine
I spend all my time at Michelle’s house. I like it there. I like her mum and dad and her brothers and sisters. They let me do things. They treat me as if I am part of their family. They don’t get mad at me and don’t shout at me. I even spent Christmas and New Year with them. Michelle’s dad bought me a bottle of rum. My dad got me nothing.
I stay there a lot. Sometimes I don’t go to school. I don’t really care. I get E’s in my lessons now. I am not even allowed in my religious Education lesson. The teacher banned me from the lesson and then I had to drop it. I don’t care. Who believes in God anyway? They tried to ban me from French too, but they can't. I have to take that. I am not allowed in the classroom, though. When I get there, the teacher puts my desk and chair outside and I have to sit there out of sight and do the work she gives me. I write all the answers in English. She says if I don’t stop it, I will fail French. I shrug. I don’t care.
My physical education teacher wants to me to get out of her class too. She didn’t like it when me and Lewis played with all the gym equipment, and then he sat on the trolley and I pushed him fast all along the gym and let go. He crashed into the frames. She tried to make us stand without hands on our heads in the corner. I told her to piss off. She can't do anything to me. No one can. Then I walked home.
My PE teacher banned me from playing sports too, because of a stupid boy called Christian. He hit me with a tennis racket. He said it wasn’t on purpose, but I know it was because he laughed about it. I hit him in the face with a hockey stick. He deserved it.
My teachers don’t want me in their lessons. No one wants me really. They just put up with me because they have to, but when I go away, it makes everyone happy. I just like Michelle and her mum and dad. They don’t make me feel like I should go away. They let me and Lewis and Rebecca stay around there and have fun. I can smoke pot and no one says anything about it. I don’t get hit for it. So I go every day. Sometimes, I don’t go to school.
My mum is so stupid, though. She doesn’t even know. I asked her to sign something, and I learnt how to do her handwriting. Now, I can write notes to school so I don’t have to go in, and I can sign them. Then the teachers don’t call her and ask her where I am. It’s easy to write like someone else. Writing is like drawing, and I draw all the time in my books. So, I just draw her handwriting and say sorry he wasn’t in yesterday. No one asks about it.
When I don’t go to school, I just wait at Michelle’s house until she finishes. I help her mum and dad with things, or I just sit with her dad and we smoke and watch westerns. He likes them. He falls asleep sometimes, and I just sit there and read. He loves horses and carts. On Sundays, he takes me to the pub around the corner and it’s all he talks about. He wants horses and a farm of them. It sounds great.
Michelle isn’t here today. Her mum and dad have gone out too. He has a hospital appointment or something. I am allowed to be there when they are not there. They just let me go in. They don’t lock the front door. As long as I look after the dogs, it doesn’t matter. I don’t stay there today. Instead, I go to the rock gardens near the house and school. I can meet Lewis at lunchtime, and we can have a smoke. It’s a nice day, even though it is just April. It isn’t raining and it isn’t very cold. I take my book, and I sit and wait for Lewis. Sometimes, I like to do it and just be quiet. When Lewis comes, I ask if he has a joint on him. He usually does. We light it and smoke it and talk about nothing, and then he goes back to school for the afternoon, and I tell him I will see him later.
I don’t want to sit there all day. The Rock Gardens are on the top of a long hill. I walk down that. At the bottom of the hill is the golf course, where me and Rachel used to hang out together. I wonder if all our things are still there. Maybe I can look. I have lots of time before I have to go home to get changed.
I don’t hear the car beeping at me at first. It just sounds like a noise in my head, but then it gets louder and makes me jump. It’s my mum. She doesn’t drive a lot. She doesn’t like to. She thinks things will fall over, like the street lamps, and then they will crush her. She played with the Ouija board and the bad man came out. Many things try to kill her she says to me.
I think about turning and running away, but she pulls over and opens the window more. There isn’t any point in running away. She has seen me, and she will just get me when I get home. I sigh and walk over to the car.
“Get in,” she says to me, and I do. I know I am about to get yelled at. “Why aren’t you in school?” she asks me. I tell her I don’t know. I'm just not. I stare out of the window and she drives. She says lots of things to me, but I don’t say anything back. She is getting mad. I can hear it in her words. She smacks the steering wheel. “Will you answer me, so I am not talking to myself,” she says to me. But what is the point? She won’t listen anyway.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asks me. “Why are you acting this way? Why can't you be more like your brother, or your friend, Aadi?”
“Shut up,” I say to her. I don’t want to hear her stupid voice or the stupid words.
“Shut up?” she asks me. “Shut up?”
“Yes, shut up. Clearly, you heard me. Stop saying it.”
She says it many times and gets really mad about it. I fold my arms over and look out of the window again. Whatever.
I don’t know what happens. It goes slow. Like I am dreaming. I can't move. I watch it coming, but I can't speak and say anything about it. It’s blue and getting bigger. I don’t realise it is a car. I just watch it and it gets closer. I don’t know what I am watching, or why it is coming this way. I can't think. It bangs so loud in my ears maybe they have popped. It’s like an explosion, and we slide sideways, and then we stop.
I sit still. I don’t move. Nothing moves. My mum doesn’t move. The car door is bent inside. The blue car is against ours. My mum’s head is at her window, and then, I don’t know. Maybe I go away. It is all black and I can't remember. Maybe I fell asleep like I used to when the bad man came.
Someone knocks on my door. There are lights everywhere and I am cold. I shiver and it makes my teeth rattle. A man talks to me, but I don’t know what he is saying. There are police everywhere. I can see the lights and lots of people around. The man says he is an ambulance man. He opens my door and tells me to stay still. “You’ve been in an accident,” he says to me. “I’m going to put this on your neck to help you.” He slides something around my neck and fastens it. I don’t understand.
He asks me my name. I know what it is, but I don’t know how to say it. I try to look at my mum. It is hard because of the stupid thing he put on my neck. “Look this way,” he says to me. “Keep your eyes on me.” He asks me lots of questions. Stupid questions about school and my friends. He asks me when my birthday is. They get me out of the car and put me on a trolley and put me in the ambulance. I don’t say anything. I don’t know what happened.
Maybe I fell asleep again. I don’t really know. I open my eyes and I am in hospital. I am sat up in my bed. My mum isn’t there. No one is. There is a nurse. I ask her where my mum is, but she says my dad is on his way. I should get some sleep.
It feels like hours.
Seventy
I don’t know what time it is. My dad is here. Maybe it is dinnertime. I can smell food. It smells like old cabbage and coffee. It reminds me of when I go to the place my Nan goes to. It smells like old people’s dinner. I can hear trolleys, and people are moving around. I see them through the window in my room. They pull the big trolley out. It has sliding doors, and the nurses come and take plates that have blue covers on them. They take them into other rooms. The nurse knocks on the door at the other side and takes some food in. I don’t know why I got put in this room.
I can see my dad out of the window. I sit up so my legs hang off the edge of the bed. I haven’t seen my mum yet. I don’t know where she is. Maybe she is in one of the other rooms. She will be scared all by herself. She doesn’t like strange places. Maybe she is already home and I didn’t know. I don’t have the neck thing on anymore. My chest hurts. I have a bruise there from the seatbelt. My tongue hurts too. I bit it a little when the blue car hit our car. I think about it. I can hear the smash noise in my head. It makes my ears full so I can't hear anything else. I don’t even hear my dad when he says something to me.
I hug my knees up and put my arms around them. “Where is my mum?” I ask him. He doesn’t answer me. He stares at me as if he is mad. “I’m sorry,” I say to him. Maybe she told him about me not going to school. Maybe she is too mad at me. “I didn’t mean to shout at her. I didn’t mean to make her crash the car. It’s my fault. I made her mad.”
I know it was me. If I had gone to school, she wouldn’t have crashed. Now we don’t have a car anymore, and it’s my fault.
“It’s your fault?” he asks me. I nod my head. I know I will be in trouble when I get home. The car is gone. That’s a lot of money. “It’s your fault she’s dead?” he asks me.
Dead? I don’t know what he means. I try to ask him again, but he is mad. “Is my mum dead?” I ask. He says yes. I don’t say anything at all. I don’t talk. I don’t look.
“Get your things,” he says to me. I feel funny inside. It isn’t real. Someone else died. Maybe they got the name wrong. I need to go and see my mum. We can't leave her at the hospital by herself; she will be scared. She doesn’t like to be in places by herself. What if she cries about it? What if she needs to go home because she gets too worried, then she can't walk because her car is smashed up, and it is all my fault. We have to go home.
I walk behind my dad out of my room and along the corridor. They are green like before. I don’t say anything to my dad. I didn’t mean to make the car crash. Maybe my mum is outside in my dad’s car and she is waiting.
I rub my neck. It feels funny from where the foam thing was. They took it off because I don’t need it. “Not a scratch,” the nurse said. She said I was lucky. Many people walk past us. I don’t know why they are there. I wonder if they know why I am there. Maybe they can see that I made my mum mad, and now she is dead. They look at me when we walk past them, lots of them. Some smile and some look sad. I wonder if they know anything. I feel like I am dreaming. All the sounds make echoes in my head, and I am sure I am not real. Not really real right now. If I close my eyes, maybe I can open them again and wake up. Did I get drunk?
Maybe if I touch my dad, my hand will go through him like a ghost. I reach my hand out to him, but I don’t touch him. What if he is real and then he hits me? All the people that walk past us will see, and they will know that I made my mum crash the car.
We go outside and my dad has his work car. My mum doesn’t like to sit in that one. My dad uses it for work. He wears his overalls, and it makes the seats black. It is old and tatty. It has a door from a different car and patches where my dad fixed bits of it. It is raining now. It wasn’t before. I look up and it goes in my eyes. Maybe I am really awake. I think about my mum at home in the kitchen. I try to think what it will be like if she isn’t in the kitchen.
My dad drives along the main road to go home. Every time he stops behind a car, I think it’s going to hit it, and then I hear the crash in my head. My dad stops at some traffic lights. It makes me scared. I look around at all the cars. Maybe one will hit us. The car feels like it will just break. All the cars are going to hit us because they don’t fit on the road, or they don’t see us. Something bad is going to happen. It makes it hard to breathe. I feel it all inside. It makes my head feel funny. I grip the edge of the seat in case we crash.
My dad stops. He pulls over at the side of the road near some shops. Perhaps my mum asked him to get her something. I close my eyes and tell myself it is okay. I will be home soon, and then it all goes away. But I feel scared inside. My dad doesn’t get out of the car. He said something, but I didn’t hear him. I ask him to say it again.
“Get out,” he says to me. I ask him why. Maybe I have to go to the shop for him. “I don’t want you near me,” he says. “I don’t want to have to look at you. I don’t want you in the car with me.”
I tell him I am sorry. I didn’t mean to make the car crash. “I’ll be good, I promise,” I tell him. “I’ll sit still and won’t make any noise.”
“Get out,” he says it again.
I start to cry, I can't help it. I don’t want to get out of the car. “Please don’t make me,” I say to him.
He reaches over and smacks me in the face with the back of his hand. “Get out,” he says to me again. He makes his words so mad that he is nearly spitting when he says them. I put my hand to my face where he hit me. I try to make the tears go away, but I can't.
“Please,” I cry at him. “I’ll be good.” He lifts his hand up to do it again. I cry so hard that I can't even make it all come out. It makes my eyes and head hurt. I don’t know how to make him know that I will be good. I won’t do anything bad. I just want to go home and see my mum.
“Out,” he says to me like he is growling. I open the door and get out of the car.
“Please don’t go. Please stay.” I don’t want him to leave me there. I didn’t mean to make the car crash. I didn’t mean to make my mum dead. “I'm sorry.” It makes me be nearly sick because I cry so much. “Please dad,” I say, but he pulls the door shut and puts the lock down.
He drives away. I put my hands over my face again. My nose is bleeding, but I don’t care. I just want my dad to come back. I watch for him. I watch the car go along the road. Maybe he will come back. Maybe when he gets to the roundabout, he will turn around and come and get me. It’s just a trick because I am bad. “Please come back,” I say.
I run to the end of the road and shout dad. But he turns off the road and then he is gone; I can't see him. I bend over and put my hands in my hair and pull to make the crying stop. I don’t want people to see me. I don’t want them to know what I did. I stay there for a long time. I don’t have anywhere else to go. No one wants me. Not when they know. I think about Michelle’s house and her mum and dad, but I can't tell them that I made my mum die. I think about Rachel, but I haven’t seen her, and she has lots of new friends now. Maybe I can just go to the garage, and my dad doesn’t know I am there. I won’t get in his way.
I walk slowly. I look for his car in case he comes back, but I know he won’t. He doesn’t want me. Not really. I am sorry I made her die. Maybe it should be me. I ask God many times to not let me wake up. Maybe I can be dead instead.
Seventy One
It is late when I get back to my mum and dad’s house. I go around the back like always. The gate isn’t locked. I can see all the lights on. Maybe I can go inside. Maybe my mum didn’t finish in the kitchen again. Then I remember. She is gone. I go around the kitchen to the back door. I look through the window in the dining room. I can see all the way to the lounge. My Nan is there. There are some people from my mum’s church too. They all have cups and are talking. I can't see my dad.
I try to see if the door is unlocked. It is. I open it slowly. I don’t want to make my dad mad if I come banging into the house. It always makes – made - mum mad when I did that. It would make her jump and scared.
I don’t realise my dad is in the kitchen. I didn’t see him there and couldn’t see him through the windows; they are too high up. He slams his hand down on mine that is still on the handle. He squeezes my fingers around it. It is metal and it digs in. I can feel it. It feels like my bones are going to break around it. He squeezes as hard as he can. I put my hand over my mouth to keep my scream inside. I don’t want to make any noise, then my Nan will hear and then my dad will tell her what I did.
“Look at your Nan,” he says to me. “Go in there and look at her face and see what you have done. When you have looked, don’t you dare stay. You go to your room and you don’t move. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to look at you for one more minute.”
He lets go of my hand. I put my other hand down and some of my tears come out. I nod at my dad, but I don’t look at him. I wish he knew that I am sorry. I wish I could tell him that I didn’t mean it. I wipe my eyes and squeeze my hand together because it hurts. I walk through the dining room and into the lounge. I can see my Nan has cried too. Her eyes are all red. I am sorry. I didn’t mean to do it. I don’t say anything. I wish I could go away. I wish my mum came back.
My Nan and everyone stops talking when I come into the lounge. My mum is supposed to be there, but she isn’t and it’s my fault. I look at the pile of magazines on the floor next to the fireplace. She lies – lay - there reading them. But not now. My Nan says my name and holds her hand out for me, but I shake my head and look away. I turn and run up the stairs away from everyone. I'm sorry.
I go to my bedroom and close the door. I kneel on the floor and lean on the bed, but I don’t want my mum to shout at me because I make the bed a mess. I try not to. I try not to cry. I don’t do anything. I listen to all the people downstairs. I can hear them talking. I don’t know what they are saying; maybe they are talking about me. The boy that killed his mum. I really am evil like she said.
Goodbye Teddy Page 31