by Tom Anderson
Acknowledgements
With thanks to Max Romeo and Charmax Musix for approval to mention the lines from Mr Romeo’s song ‘Chase the Devil’; and with thanks to Cambridge University Press for permission to quote from the King James Bible, Isaiah 14:12.
Part 1
Chapter 1
I saw my first ghost when I was four. That was eleven years ago, when life was simple. That’s why I know there’s nothing to worry about now. Really not a big deal. I’ve always seen things no one believed, so why would it be any different now?
Idiot Dr Wentloog, though, has decided all the stuff that has happened was down to ‘limited emotional literacy’? Not being able to understand your own thoughts, in other words. He’s wrong, of course. I understand exactly what goes on in my head. The only problem is getting it all into words.
Apparently that’s where the literacy bit comes in.
‘Draw me a picture, then, Luca,’ he said, looking around the most barren room you’ll ever see, as if maybe there was something in our surroundings I might like the look of. ‘Show me how you’re feeling.’
This was his big idea of how to solve all my ‘problems’. D’you realise how much these idiots earn? It’s like five times more than my mum and dad combined – and the rest.
Mind you, my dad would have an issue with me saying that. He’s going to make a fortune for himself one day soon. Something big is just around the corner. All he needs is for the rest of us to believe it. As well as for the thing to actually exist.
So anyway, back to Dr Wentloog. He reckons I need to try and work out how I came to be here, in this stupid situation. Get my stuff in order, he’s told me. Knock up a sort of log, even, if it helps. Do I get a choice? Apparently not. Especially since he can probably lock me up and ruin my life far more effectively than my parents ever could. And they’re not bad at it either.
To tell the truth though, I don’t really know the story, anyway. He says that doesn’t matter right now, and maybe he’s right. What’s important, they’re telling me, is that I’m trying to tell it, wrong or not.
This probably is all wrong, but here goes anyway. I don’t know what I’m meant to say anymore, so when you really thing about it, what have I got to lose?
Nothing at all.
Chapter 2
So the first really important thing I saw was about three months ago. That’s when the whole world started whirling for me.
It was a freezing night, but the fizzing of the sea kept me sort of warm. D’you get that too, or is it just me? That noise the water makes when it scratches the shore – it stops me worrying about cold, or the other stresses in my life. Skint parents, fighting friends, even danger. And in the dark it’s even better – the noise of the water.
Tell me it’s not normal to sit on the shoreline in the middle of the night? Who’s anyone to say what is ‘normal’ anyway? After the day I’d had, it was the best place to head. I mean it.
During the morning I’d been listening to an old, old man, Bunny Wailer, on my way to school. He’s the guy who just about set Bob Marley up with all his earliest, best music. Did you know Bunny’s first band was Bob Marley and the Wailers? Well, that’s why.
Anyway, that freezing morning Old Bunny was wailing in my ears for me and only me to hear about how dawn is breaking as you approach the gates. As always I’d chosen my lyrics perfectly to help me through the bits that make me all anxious. This particular day I had it perfect, too. I rounded the corner just as Bunny sings about the gatekeeper and how I mustn’t arrive late, and there was Mr Kleener, as always, ready to hold me back and put me on litter duty if I was thirty seconds slower.
Now, before we go any further, it’s really important you understand how important this kind of music is to me. I know it’s a bit old-school and the rest of the kids in my year think I don’t really like it and am just trying to be the odd one out. But that’s not it at all. I like reggae more than anything on earth because it’s got some sort of magical connection to my blood. Maybe my heart pumps on that off beat, or my brain fires with that same, slow wobble. Whatever it is, though, if I get it right, it makes me invincible – even if people still mess me around. It’s a medicine to me.
Cool Runnings, wailed the title of Bunny’s song, secretly in my ear, as Mr Kleener glared at me. I knew he was a bit gutted that I was on time. He’d probably get someone else in a minute, anyway. Cool Runnings.
* * *
I do my best not to be on too many people’s radars in school. My main friend at Chapel Shores Comprehensive is probably a girl. Gabrielle is her proper name but she’s got like three versions and she’ll tell you which you’re allowed to use.
‘Like the way it works in French,’ she explained once. ‘You’ve got tu and vous or in Welsh you’ve got ti and chi. Well, I go by different names depending on your position to me.’
She’s made it work well, too. She’s ‘Gaby’ to friends and family, ‘Gabe’ to the people she calls ‘close-close friends’. The third name she uses, ‘Gabo’, was given to her by a few of the boys who wound her up, but she took it on and made that into a kind of nice-sounding name, too. Apparently her favourite Latin American writer is called that, too. Gabo is what she goes by if you only know her a bit.
‘I’m “Gaby” to you,’ she tells me. ‘You probably need to be a girl before I’m “Gabe”.’
That’s kind of silly coming from her, because she’s got short, light hair and often dresses like a boy. It’s not spiky – just a basin cut, and it’s probably dark originally but you never see roots. She’s got a big thing about how it’s her right to look like a boy if she wants. Easy for her to say, because even though she doesn’t really know it, she’s pretty hot. She’s never gonna be at any risk of looking like a boy. Trust me.
‘Your hippy parents can call me Gabe though,’ she used to say.
Now, the bit that’s always been odd about our friendship is that I was kind of banned from showing it in certain places. I think it’s probably beyond that now, after this little episode and the whole Dr Wentloog nonsense, but back then the rule was properly in place. That’s what set me off, in fact.
Anyway, Mr Kleener had failed to get me into his late club, which left me in Reg with nobody bothering me. My other two mates were in another form, so I sat there trying to listen to more Bunny and his song about the land across the sea, without our supply form teacher seeing the earphone. All good. But then came PSE.
Now you know no one really wants to take PSE seriously, right? Okay, occasionally someone comes in to talk about drugs, and we listen then – even though everyone knows everything they’re telling you and the nicknames for things are several years out. Also, there was a bloke who used to be a girl who spoke to us once and everyone was quiet then, but I think that was because they were so scared. The sex-ed classes are the same. The idiots are too embarrassed to say much, while the cool kids who want to pretend they’ve done it already stay quiet to look like they’re over it. But generally, for the other topics that make up ninety percent of the course, it’s a free-for-all.
I can’t remember what the lesson was on. Think it was fair trade, maybe. Anyway, they’d mixed our tutor groups up so I ended up sat across the room from Gaby who’d been put in our class. It was horrible. Her form has some of the biggest thugs in the entire school and they were flaring up really badly. There was stuff getting thrown every time the supply looked away – kids shouting at kids, the supply shouting, people shouting back at her – and then out of nowhere Gaby suddenly lost it.
‘Just SHUT UP!’ she yelled with no warning whatsoever, and the whole class went dead
quiet. ‘It’s all the time! The noise and the hating! It’s horrible. HORRIBLE! I can’t think. I don’t want to be here…’
And then she started sobbing. No word of a lie. The ice-cool Gaby, salt water draining down the edges of her normally spiked out eyelashes.
‘Look what you’ve done,’ the supply said to the boys in the middle of the room. It’s brutal, but to the supply Gaby’s meltdown was something to be used for personal gain.
Gaby just sat there, still trembling, head in her hands.
‘That’s okay,’ added the supply, realising it might actually be wise to try and do something about this. ‘I’ll get someone now. Can one of you go and fetch a teacher from next door?’
Nobody moved an inch.
‘Okay…’ She turned back to Gaby. ‘Well, would you like to go across to Reception? What’s your name?’
Gaby didn’t reply because by now she must have realised she was having a crying fit in front of a whole class. Her face probably was best left out of sight behind those palms.
‘Gabo,’ yelled one of the cheesers from behind me, and a low, hooligan chuckle bounced around the room, gentle but sinister.
Almost out of ideas, the supply said to Gaby, ‘Is there someone here who you know well? Someone who can take you over.’
I looked around. No answer from anyone. No answer from Gaby either, so I did what I simply don’t do. I put my hand up. I volunteered as tribute.
‘I know her, miss. I’ll go.’
And like that, I was committed to the course of action. Next I know, my bag was packed, notepad away along with the pen everyone knew we were never going to use, and I was leading a sniffling Gaby out into the foyer.
The boys behind were chuckling again, and as the door closed I heard one say, ‘Too easy! She flips like that all the time, honest, Miss.’ I wanted to go back, to tell the supply that it was bullshit, but the moment for that action came and went in an instant.
By now Mr Kleener had got onto our block and he’d seen us come out. I don’t know if he was alerted by hearing Gaby freak out, or – and this is probably more likely – if it was the silence that followed which warned him something wasn’t normal. Either way, here he was, taking over without a word and she was on her way towards the part of Reception Block which people don’t tend to come back from within the same day.
‘Go back to class, Luca Lincoln-James,’ he said. First name too friendly for him, surname too long – so he always went for the whole lot.
And off Gaby walked.
Back in class and not brave enough to challenge the view that Gaby had meltdowns like that routinely, I was drifting and trying to be forgettable again. I’d probably done about the right thing, but still, I was now fully stressed at how something must be massively wrong with her for Gaby to be like that. Then the buzzer went and it was off to Maths.
Little did I know I had been lined up for a proper grilling, too. And not from any teacher.
The boys had been staring from the second I got back in the room. They’d gone a bit quieter and I’d kind of thought it was just because they’d finally got the crap out of their system after making Gaby spin out like that. I got my head down and started reading a loose copy of a worksheet we were meant to be doing, one of the few that hadn’t been ripped or scrunched up yet.
The eyes stayed on me, though. And they were whispering. D’you ever find that worse than a heavy din? Bad kids whispering… It means they’re using their brains.
I forgot how idiots like that think, didn’t I? Forgotten that in their world everything is always about them and no one else.
In their minds, I’d been outside telling Mr Kleener in perfect detail how it was their behaviour and their actions that made the class the kind of place a girl like Gaby would freak her way out of. It probably was, in fairness, but I walked out because I cared about her, not because I was looking to report what anyone else in the class was doing. And anyway, as I just told you, Mr Kleener didn’t even give me the chance to breathe before sending me back to PSE again.
‘Luca! Lukalukalookaa!’ one of them shouted as we all made our way towards the Maths rooms.
I kept on walking, just ahead, steady pace.
‘Lookalookaa. LUCA!’
Now it sounded kind of aggro. I walked on, no turning round, that chesty feeling coming up on me like there was some side-pipe carrying the air back out of me when I breathed. My shoulders started burning and my neck and eyes felt tight.
The only reason I didn’t fall over was because there were people in front who broke my tumble.
One of the boys behind had timed it perfect, kicking my right foot sideways when I was taking a step, so that it clicked against my heel. I grabbed the bag of some Year 10 kid in front of me to keep my balance, and saw the look of fear in his face when he turned round. The whole group of trouble makers from PSE was right up behind me. The stumble meant I’d slowed down and whirled, face to face with them.
‘Walking out of class like that?’ said Joseph Poundes, the biggest, largest, most popular and least sensitive of the lot. It sounded like a question.
In my head I was telling him to piss off, but the breathing thing was now fully on me. Chest was sore, throat dry. He grabbed my head on each side with his hands.
‘If Kleener comes after any of us now, I’ll paint the floor with you. Or even worse.’
Then he planted a kiss hard against my forehead and the others all laughed, deep and forced.
* * *
There was nowhere to go but to get dragged by the current to Maths, where I sat trying to get the breath back right. To do that, I had to think about Gaby again. What she might need. She would almost certainly be missing lessons now. I couldn’t imagine what someone like Mr Kleener could do for her, or what made her blow her top, but my head was saying I’d done the right thing by helping get her out of PSE.
Then I started thinking how I kind of hoped she was putting down some big statement about what it was like in lessons here, how scary it could be for the rest of us to try and be anything at all with Poundes and his crew making the air thick with their fake bravery. It must be so much worse for girls to sit through that stuff than it was even for me. And you wouldn’t believe how they talked in subjects like PE, either – when there were only boys around and they got to say the uncensored, ‘lad’ version of what they thought about girls. Or what they were pretending to think about girls, anyway.
Anyway, they had chucked me in with the girls as some kind lesser species a long time ago now. And d’you know what? I was fine with that. At least I knew where I stood – or stumbled, maybe. As my throat warmed again and my heart steadied, I kept repeating to myself that Gaby had needed the help back there. Her horrible morning might be slightly more bearable because of what I’d put myself through.
Or so I thought, anyway. Maybe I don’t read anyone right at all, though. Only minutes out of Maths and it was all on top of me again. The whole world was trying to cave in. I don’t know what I was expecting when she phoned during break – I mean, she never phoned me – but it wasn’t this:
‘What the HELL were you DOING?’ Gaby yelled at me.
‘I, er, I…’
‘Well? D’you realise how much WORSE you made that? I’ve told you. Stay OUT of my business when we’re in those big classes. What makes you think you can just announce you’re one of my friends like that?’
‘But I am,’ I tried to tell her. ‘Gaby…’
‘Gaby NOTHING,’ she was fuming. You could feel it down the phone. ‘I TOLD you. It’s your weirdo parents that make me like you. That’s all. And it’s not a case of “liking” anyway. I’m the one being kind to you. Get it? I don’t need no hero to the rescue like that. If I’m having a crap day then STAY AWAY.’
‘Okay, I’m sor…’
And she was gone. Hung up. Cut off. Home. Off the radar. Out of
contact.
Leaving my warped Luca mind to have to get itself through the rest of the day, which was only about another four hours of noise, and Joseph Poundes, and his mates, and movement, and heat.
* * *
Now, the one thing I cannot handle is doing things wrong. That’s often why I don’t do things in the first place. (Wow. There’s one thing this has just made me realise! Scrub that last comment before this goes to Dr Wentloog, then.) Seriously, though, I hang behind when things need to be done because if I put my foot in it then my head can’t come back.
Getting pegged in the corridor and then threatened by the prop forward in the rugby team might sound scary to you, but it was the Gaby thing sent me over the brink that day.
You can see it coming a mile off, and then there’s like this sort of lightning-bolt moment when it’s on me and there’s nothing I can do. My face heats up. I want to scream but can’t because my breath has gone. It lasts no time at all, but when it leaves it kind of empties my head and my heart with it. It floors me.
Gaby didn’t know back then, of course, so who can blame her? But what she said to me at break, so soon after I’d had that boily-blood feeling? Well, it must have helped get the cycle going, right? And what a cycle. The rest of the day’s a write off – it’s not even about survival anymore – and then I’m sitting there at dinner, watching my parents laugh at nothing, and I’m thinking how I want to make them feel like I do. I start wanting to vanish, go away, like that will do it. They wouldn’t notice, anyway.
As if Gaby hadn’t filled my head with monkeys, that night my dad was on about this deal he’s gonna do, again.
‘I think I know someone now who can lend me the last two G,’ he was telling my mum.
‘Wait,’ she was saying back. ‘Do it properly. Sell those boxes of shoes and you’ll get half of that anyway, without causing yourself more trouble.’
‘They’re going slow,’ he told her. ‘Plenty of watchers. But only got a bid on one of them that’s going close to the reserve price I set.’