Not As We Know It

by Tom Avery

  “Down there…it was amazing,” Ned had said.

  Down there. What had he seen? All I’d seen was the dark.

  In the stories, those left behind, like me, were left not knowing. The Japanese captain had seen something down there, but not his crew. Long Ben had only heard a snatch of that other world, in the song of the ocean. The brother had watched as Mathew Trewella went somewhere he could never follow. I was left in the dark as I had been from the day Leonard came. I was here and Ned was gone, gone for sure. But had he gone gone? Or was he somewhere? Somewhere down there. Would he still sing, like Mathew, like Perla?

  There was doubt. There were questions.

  —

  That night, after the coast guard had come, Dad asked me if I’d known what Ned was planning. It was an important question. I was honest. I hadn’t known. But maybe I should have known. Maybe if I had not been so blind, if I’d believed what I would not. Maybe I could have stopped him.

  Mum held on to me tightly as she wept.

  “I don’t understand,” she sobbed into the top of my head.

  I wanted to tear away from her. I wanted to scream. I wanted to smash each and every one of the Star Trek videos that stared at me from their shelf.

  Granddad looked grim. He cleared his throat and said that nobody was ready to lose Ned. “But he was always his own little man. Headstrong. He knew he was going. He made a choice to go his own way.”

  I couldn’t tell them about Leonard. I wished I could. I wished I could give Mum answers. But no one would understand. Granddad would blame himself for his stories. Dad would think I’d gone mad with grief.

  I couldn’t say, “He might still be out there somewhere.” I could not tell them to listen, listen every night for his voice carried on the wind, on the waves. I could not tell them to listen for him as I was doing.

  —

  Over the days that followed—empty, hollow, silent days—it wasn’t grief that drove me, it was anger. I was furious with Ned. But most of all I burned with hatred for Leonard.

  I took my brother’s bike down that path again. I left it and hopped from rock to rock out to the shelf. I leaned out over the sea. I stared and stared into the waves.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I shouted. “Why didn’t you tell me what he was here for? What you planned?”

  I shook, not with the cold but with rage.

  “You said it was our adventure. It was not ours. You went alone! You went alone, Ned!”

  I roared my brother’s name and the sea swallowed it as it had swallowed him.

  I whispered now, but I knew the waves were listening, for the sea had stilled and the world froze to hear. “I need to know if you got there…down there. I need to know if you got that different life.”

  My tears made tiny ripples on the swirling waters. Rain followed them. I let it fall around me and over me. I rolled off the shelf and into the cold sea. I bobbed a while then kicked off my plimsolls. I let them sink beneath me.

  Then I dived.

  “Down there…it was amazing,” Ned had said.

  So I dived. Deeper and deeper. But for me there was nothing down there. Just the black and the cold. They filled me.

  When I could take no more, when my teeth chattered and my eyes would not stay open in the stinging salt, I wrenched myself out and onto the shelf. I lay again, shivering.

  The rain fell. It grew dark. The moon came, and with it that star. It hung above, alone. I lay below, alone.

  A voice came calling. “Jamie?” He moved slowly from rock to rock. “Jamie?” he said again. Granddad pulled his coat off and wrapped it around me. “Oh, Jamie,” he said. “Come on.”

  He did not take me home but to his house. He dried me and wrapped me in blankets. He called Mum and Dad.

  “He’s fine,” Granddad told them. “I’ll bring him home in a little while.” The phone clicked off; then Granddad sat beside me. “Can I say something about all of this?” he said.

  Granddad never asked to talk. He just talked. I nodded, knowing he must have something important to say.

  “When your grandmother died,” he said, “I thought I had two choices. I thought I could either cling to her, hold onto every memory, let them tear me all up. Or I thought I could let her go. Pretend none of it had ever happened. Pretend I’d never had a wife. Harden myself to it. Tear my own heart out. You understand?”

  I nodded. I knew what choices my parents were making; Mum was being torn apart, clinging to her lost son, while Dad was as hard as the stone he quarried.

  “It took me a long time to find another way. And I won’t lie, Jamie—it was much harder than the other two.”

  I looked up at my Granddad, who normally had a story, a tale to tell, but today just these few words.

  “It’s called living,” he said. “And you have to get on and do it. Otherwise everyone loses—two people, not one—and the life you had with him stands for nothing. You know what Ned would want you to do, don’t you?”

  I nodded again, slowly this time. I knew exactly what my brother wanted. I had my doubts I could do it.

  “Boldly go,” he had said.

  But I needed a final word. I needed a whisper. I needed to hear his song, if I was to do as Granddad said, to do as Ned said.

  I stood and looked around at all the faces.

  So many had gathered in the tiny church for the bodiless funeral. Mr. Taylor was there and Lucy and little Peter and their mum, Claire. Mrs. Clarke stood in a black cardigan and black hat. Tibs was there. His dad had closed the post office for the day and was there too with Tibs’s mum. Nearly every family from school had come. The kids all looked strange dressed up smart. The teachers were there. There were some nurses and doctors. Quarrymen. Bill the postman.

  Before the service began, Tibs came to talk to me. He said what you’re meant to say. “I’m sorry, mate.”

  I shrugged and glared. I’d been forced into a tight shirt and too-big suit. Granddad had his hand on my shoulder.

  “Do you think you’ll be coming back to school?” Tibs asked.

  I shrugged again. Granddad squeezed my shoulder. It’s called living, I thought. I nodded. “I guess so,” I said.

  “Good, mate. I’ve missed you.”

  Lucy had joined us. “Yeah, you should. We’re doing this project about space at the moment. You’d like it,” she said.

  Then the vicar walked behind the stand and the service began with songs and religious words. I let it wash over me in waves. Waves of anger. Waves of tears.

  Mum cried. Dad sat grimly and grayly. Granddad went to the front to speak. I tried to listen.

  “Full of life,” I heard, and “unforgettable,” and “the gap he’ll leave.”

  —

  After the service, everyone came to the house. People had made food and brought out drink. A line of people held on to Mum, who flashed a brief smile at me from across the room. Dad’s icy frame cracked a little, standing huddled with Tony, a few tears dropping.

  I slipped out of the back door and stood in the quiet of the garage. Leonard’s tub was still filled. I thought about tearing all the stuff down, the shoes and cutlery and pieces of driftwood. I thought we could have a bonfire. I thought I could fill dozens of bin bags. I found, in mourning, I was more like Dad—I wanted to shut down. I wanted to pretend none of it had ever happened.

  Ned was in every piece of junk, every piece of treasure. My brother whispered and laughed and shouted in that tiny space. Memories clawed at me. I breathed in deep.

  “It’s called living,” I whispered to myself, went back into the house and brought Lucy and Tibs to see the treasure trove.

  —

  Later, in my room, on the top bunk—Ned’s bunk—I fell asleep in moments.

  Some nights, sleep seems to last forever. Others, when you wake, it’s as if no time has passed between when you closed your eyes and opened them again. That sleep passed in a blink.

  My eyes opened and I sat up. A dream had woken me, a dre
am of Ned, in a red Star Trek uniform with fins running along his head, webbed hands and webbed feet. He stood on that slab of stone where last I’d seen him. He whispered to me, “Let’s get the hell out of here.” He dived, like I’d seen him dive on the night he left.

  So I took Ned’s bike and went once more down to the rock shelf. It was not a race this time. There was no storm, but the wind blew and on it came a whistle. A hint of a whisper. I followed that whisper and with every pedal was caught up in it, was swallowed by it.

  I hopped from rock to rock out to the final one, to the end of the world. I knew what I’d find before I got there. Somehow I knew. It sat on the very edge, as if placed by a hand reaching up from the sea.

  I picked up the small bone whale and brought it to my chest. The wind blew then, stronger, the waves gathered and in their beating rhythm came a song. Not a whisper now. A song from far away, from the depths, a song that filled me, a song, joyful and free. And that song was sung by a voice I knew. It was an answer.

  Those knotted doubts unfurled. I looked up and out, away across the sea. There was life out there.

  Away south, one star still shone, Fomalhaut, the mouth of the fish. Lonely it was. And, in its loneliness, brave, bright, bold.

  I breathed deep. I smiled once more. Somehow life would continue. I knew now, as certain as the sea’s song.

  “Boldly go,” I whispered, holding the bone whale tightly, and I turned back toward home, toward life.

  Thank you first to God, for giving me all I have and loving me in all I do.

  Thank you, my friends and family, and Jonny and Gemma, for your constant support, advice and vast capacity to listen to me moan when writing’s just not working. Thank you, Maggie, for listening to every idea I have and believing in each one, and thank you, Laurie, for your example of how to be courageous.

  Thank you, Penny, for your unflagging support and belief in my writing.

  Thank you, Charlie and Chloe, for helping me find my mojo again, for your insight and your advice in making this book happen. Thank you, everyone at Andersen, for turning words into beautiful books and getting those books into readers’ hands.

  Thank you, Caleb and Rocco, my constant source of joy and inspiration. You make me laugh every day.

  Finally, thank you to Chloe. Thank you for being my best friend. Thank you for putting up with the highs and lows of making books.

  Tom Avery is the author of the middle-grade novels My Brother’s Shadow, which was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal, and Too Much Trouble, winner of the Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award. He was born and raised in London in a very large, very loud family, descendants of the notorious pirate Henry Avery. Tom has worked as a teacher in inner-city schools in London and Birmingham, and he lives in Amsterdam with his wife and two sons. Learn more at tomaveryauthor.com.