Troublemakers

by Catherine Barter

  I try not to leave my room, anyway. I sit on the floor next to the heater in thick socks and jeans and multiple jumpers, trying not to listen in on the murmured conversations from the rest of the flat. Nick talks very quietly and carefully to Danny, like you’d talk to a wild animal or something. I hear my name a few times. I try not to listen. I listen to the rain drumming against the windows and pretend to do homework.

  My brother has never been this angry with me before.

  There was one time last summer when I walked to the park after school to try and get a suntan, and I forgot to tell anybody where I was, and my phone battery died, and when I got home two hours later than usual Danny had called the police and Nick and Nick’s parents and he was so busy yelling at me when I got home that he forgot to call any of those people to tell them that he’d found me. And the time a bunch of stupid boys at primary school made all these jokes about my brother that I won’t bother to repeat, and I deliberately tripped one of them over with a skipping rope, and he broke his arm, and Danny got called to the school, and he was furious, and he said I should always, always, always just walk away from conflict. Which I thought was bad advice even then, and I think that boy just had fragile bones.

  Those times were bad but this is worse.

  It’s Wednesday evening before they come up with a list of punishments and they start reeling them off over dinner, which at least gives us all something to talk about, since every other meal this week has happened in silence.

  They’re confiscating my laptop for two weeks, except when I need it for homework, when I have to use it in the living room so they can see what I’m doing.

  I’m not allowed to go to Teagan’s house for a month, and I have to come straight home from school every day, I can’t stop off anywhere except the coffee shop if Nick’s there.

  I have to do the washing up every night for two weeks.

  And I have to write an apology letter.

  ‘To who?’ I say.

  ‘To whoever you want to apologise to,’ says Nick.

  ‘What if I don’t want to apologise to anybody?’

  ‘Then write a letter explaining that.’

  ‘But to who?’

  ‘It’s up to you.’

  This is clearly some weird activity that Nick has found in a parenting book, and anyway, I say, how am I supposed to write a letter without my laptop.

  ‘How about with a pen?’ says Danny, as if that makes it a totally reasonable idea.

  That’s about all he says during the whole meal. When he’s finished he gets up and clears his plate and goes into his bedroom.

  ‘How about you write the letter to Danny?’ say Nick, quietly, once Danny has shut the bedroom door.

  ‘I’ve already said I’m sorry to his face,’ I point out.

  ‘You could write it in a letter and explain why you did it,’ he says. ‘You could tell him what you said to me about your mum.’

  Mentioning anything to do with her will only make him angrier, and it’s amazing to me that Nick doesn’t know this.

  The same evening, Mike calls.

  ‘You put me in a really difficult position, Lena,’ he says when I answer the phone. ‘I sort of wish you hadn’t done that.’

  Back at you, I think about saying.

  ‘Who was your second source?’ I say.

  ‘I can’t tell you that.’

  Danny won’t speak to him. Mike sighs. ‘I’ll try calling again tomorrow,’ he says. ‘You know, I never connected either of you to the leak. All I did was give Danny a head start on it. As a favour. He didn’t have to tell everybody at the campaign that it came from you. Losing his job, that’s on him as much as anything. I hate to say it. He could have kept his mouth shut and waited this out. I always knew he was too honest to work in politics.’

  ‘Mike reckons Danny should’ve kept his mouth shut,’ I say to Nick when I hang up.

  ‘Good advice all round,’ says Nick.

  Nobody bothers to say anything about the fact that Nick moved out for a week and has now come back, which truthfully makes me kind of angry with him, with both of them, that they can just do these things and then change their minds and not even acknowledge it, like I have nothing to do with any of it.

  I have everything to do with all of this. With Nick moving back; with my brother losing his job; with Mike and Danny not speaking; with Jacob Carlisle on the radio, trying to save himself.

  I don’t think he will be able to save himself.

  It makes me wonder what else I could do. What else I’m capable of.

  In three years I will be able to vote and I will still have less power than I did at the moment that I saw that email, which was such a tiny thing but look what happened. Maybe I never planned it but it was still something that I did: I did one thing, and then I did another, and then another, and here we are. Here I am. I’ve screwed up a lot of things but I’ve still done a thing: I’ve changed something in the world.

  I wonder if this is how she used to feel. Small and sad and angry and powerful all at the same time.

  PART FOUR

  FORTY

  ‘Is it over yet?’ I say.

  Zahra snorts. ‘It may as well be. I just came to get teabags.’ She looks round the room. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to come upstairs?’

  ‘I’m doing homework.’

  ‘You can do homework upstairs. We’re not that busy any more.’

  ‘Have they ruled you-know-who out, yet?’

  ‘Voldemort?’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘Sister, they ruled him out hours ago. The whole vote counting thing is just a formality. We all know it’s Chris Buckley again. Come upstairs. It’s nearly eleven.’

  ‘I have to pick a poem about London and write an analysis of it.’ I hold my book up. It’s called London Poems.

  ‘When’s it due?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Ouch.’ She starts scanning the labels of all the boxes stacked up against the walls. We are in the basement of the coffee shop, where Nick keeps stock and the safe and there’s one giant fridge for milk. I like it down here. It’s clean and quiet and there’s a table and chairs which are supposedly for staff meetings, although I happen to know there has never been a staff meeting in all the time the shop has been open. I like it because nobody is allowed down here apart from staff: but I am, because I’m me. ‘Can you tell your teacher you stayed up late to watch election coverage?’ says Zahra. ‘That’s a worthwhile educational thing to have been doing.’

  ‘Maybe. She set this two weeks ago though.’

  ‘Alena,’ says Zahra, mock disapproval. ‘Bad girl.’ To herself, she murmurs ‘Peppermint, peppermint, chamomile, redbush, obviously we can’t stock any normal tea, oh no …’

  ‘Did Danny come in? He said he might.’

  ‘Haven’t seen him.’

  ‘He said he might come for a bit.’

  ‘I don’t think I’d fancy watching any of it if I was him,’ says Zahra.

  Upstairs, in the corner of the shop, Nick has hooked up the old television from the back office so people can watch the election coverage if they want. The vote was yesterday but they’ve only just finished counting, supposedly. Lots of regulars came in and stayed late and drank extra coffee so Nick will be happy, although he did in his bad shoulder when he was messing around with the TV and had to go and lie down in the office for half an hour and take a bunch of aspirin.

  I put down my London Poems book on the table and line it up carefully with my pen and my highlighters. ‘He’s not talking to me. He doesn’t want to be around me.’

  Zahra stops what she’s doing and turns, looks at me for a moment. Then she sits down on an upturned crate. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a packet of chewing gum and offers me a stick. I shake my head.

  ‘I used to fall out with my parents all the time. Especially when I was your age. I can’t remember any of it any more, but we’d all be furious with each other about fifty per cent of t
he time.’ She makes a face. ‘God, I wouldn’t be fifteen again if you paid me.’

  ‘This is different. He’s having a breakdown or something. He’s grown a beard. He hates beards.’

  Zahra’s face is serious, like she can see I’m trying to be flippant when I don’t feel that way at all.

  ‘I heard,’ she says.

  It’s true. Since he got fired, Danny hasn’t bothered to shave and has hardly left the house – he’s just been sitting around at home in silence, reading utility bills and not even listening to any of his I am seriously depressed music. He is silent and then will be randomly angry, with me or Nick or anyone who comes near him. I’ve never seen him like this, and it makes me feel sick and anxious and like I want to fix him but I don’t know how. Last night Nick asked if I wanted to spend half-term in Essex with Gerry and Marie, and then, when he saw my face, said, ‘We just thought you might like to, it’s not a command,’ but it was pretty clear they both would have been happy to get rid of me for a while.

  ‘He hates me.’

  ‘That definitely isn’t true,’ says Zahra.

  ‘He lost his job because of me.’

  ‘Oh, whatever,’ she says. ‘He’s better off without it. I bet he thanks you for it one day. Jacob Carlisle is a shallow, opportunistic bastard and everybody knows it. He goes whichever way the wind is blowing and he wouldn’t know values if you shoved them up his – anyway, he deserved what he got.’

  ‘Don’t you think Danny’s shallow and opportunistic as well, then? He was part of the whole thing. He wrote half of that strategy for safety stuff. Don’t you think—’

  ‘No,’ says Zahra. ‘I don’t. I think Danny’s probably the most decent person I know.’

  I stare at her. ‘Don’t you mean Nick?’

  ‘Ha.’ Zahra starts unwrapping her own stick of gum and laughs. ‘I love Nick and everything, but he’s only Mr Wonderful because he loves you two so much. He’s only good because you two make him that way.’ She puts the gum in her mouth. ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she says. ‘I know what I’m talking about. Nick was miserable as shit when he was staying with his brother. Danny’s got this whole I’m the lucky one and Nick’s been trapped pathology, and it’s bullshit. Nick’s the lucky one. He can’t get over how lucky he is.’

  ‘Nick stands up for things,’ I say. ‘Nick has principles. Danny went to work for a politician and he doesn’t even care about politics. He doesn’t even believe in anything. He just did it because it was a job.’

  Not totally true. I think Danny did believe some of the strategy for safety stuff. All the stuff about fear. It sounded like him.

  ‘So he’s not political,’ Zahra says. ‘This is not news to anybody. There’s more than one way to be a good person, you know?’

  I slouch down in my chair, pull the sleeves of my jumper over my hands. I would like to be a good person. I would like to know what this means.

  Then Nick’s voice calls from the top of the stairs. ‘Zahra!’ He leans his head through the door and looks down at us. ‘We need teabags up here. I can’t lift a whole box right now. Sorry.’

  She jumps to her feet. ‘All right, I know,’ she says. ‘Teabags are coming.’

  ‘Lena. Home time.’

  ‘I haven’t finished my homework.’

  ‘Well, you’re out of time. Come on. We’re out too late already. Zahra, are you OK to close up?’

  She gives him a vague salute as she drags a box out from under two others.

  When I go upstairs, there are three people sitting at a corner table, and the TV is still on. They are at City Hall, a place I’ve never been and truthfully I don’t even know where it is. A woman in glasses is standing behind a lectern shuffling papers. Lots of cameras are flashing. Behind her, they are all lined up. Chris Buckley looks relaxed. Briony McIntosh looks cheerful. Jacob Carlisle is standing directly behind the lady at the lectern so I can’t see his face. The others are all men and I can’t probably even remember their names.

  ‘As the returning officer,’ the lady says, ‘I am able to announce—’

  Nick drops a hand on my shoulder. ‘Home time,’ he says. So I don’t see the rest of it.

  Danny’s still up when we get home. He’s drinking white wine in front of the TV and the bottle is on the carpet by his feet.

  The TV is showing Chris Buckley smiling and shaking hands.

  ‘Happy now?’ says Danny when we come in, without looking away from the screen.

  Nick drops his keys on the counter, and then he goes and leans over the back of the sofa and kisses Danny on the cheek. Danny doesn’t move, eyes fixed on the TV. Nick squeezes the back of his neck as he stands up again.

  ‘We had a lot of people in tonight,’ Nick says.

  ‘Good for you,’ Danny says. As Nick goes back to the kitchen to get a glass of water I see him roll his eyes.

  ‘You should go to bed, Lena,’ Nick says.

  I play with the keyring that’s attached to the zip on my bag. ‘Can anyone pick me up from school tomorrow?’ I say. ‘I have to bring my art project home and it’s really big and I want to keep it flat.’

  Nick drinks his water slowly. We both know Danny has nowhere to be tomorrow or any other day.

  ‘I can try,’ Nick says eventually.

  ‘We’ve had a few surprises during this election, but there are no surprises at the end of it,’ says the news presenter on television.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ Danny says, but he’s still not looking at either of us.

  The next day, I write the analysis of a London poem on my lunchbreak, and hand it in in the afternoon. The poem I choose is called ‘The Night City’. I like the poem but I don’t know what to say about it so I just write that it’s ambiguous. Half the class is off school with flu and Teagan sends me a photo of herself lying in bed with huge dark shadows under her eyes, captioned, I’m dying. During afternoon break I phone Ollie, since he’s not at school either and who knows if he’s run away or been murdered or what.

  ‘I’m at home,’ he says. ‘Watching TV. I was throwing up all morning.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘All right. Good.’ I’m standing in the corridor in front of my locker. ‘Not good, but—’

  ‘I got an email from my dad this morning,’ Ollie says. His voice is weird. Maybe he’s delirious. I can hear the TV in the background, loud. It sounds like a property show.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. He says Aaron was there but he’s gone again. He’s gone up north or something.’

  ‘Oh.’ A voice on the TV is saying, ‘Within the price range but only three bedrooms, which means Jack and Lydia have a decision to make.’ I have to step out of the way as a bunch of sixth formers in their games kits come stomping down the hall. ‘So what are you going to do?’ I say.

  ‘I dunno,’ he says. ‘Nothing. I can’t do anything.’

  I don’t know what to say.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ Ollie says. ‘Talking makes me feel sick.’

  Is your mum looking after you? I almost ask, but I stop myself because I’m certain she isn’t.

  He hangs up before I can say anything else.

  When I get home, there are boxes all over the living room, and for one awful moment I think that somebody is moving out, or that I am moving out and all my stuff has been packed up for me. But it turns out that during the day Danny drove out to the storage locker, and came back with all these old boxes of stuff that used to be his. The stuff I always ignore whenever we go there. Piled up around the living room is stuff like his old school reports, and essays he wrote at university, and stupid souvenirs from holidays, like shot glasses from Mexico and other places that I never even knew he’d been to, stuff that he must have got during the tiny part of his life in between finishing university and getting me.

  ‘What are you doing with all of this?’ I say.

  ‘I’m doing whatever I like with it,’ he says. ‘It’s mine.’

  And so that is the end of that conversation.<
br />
  When Nick gets home, Danny packs it all up again and hauls all the boxes into the bedroom and Nick watches him with a kind of dread of his face that Danny might be going to keep it all, but he doesn’t say anything.

  We get takeaway Chinese for dinner, sit on the floor with cartons spread out on the coffee table.

  ‘I could do with some help next week,’ Nick says. ‘Zahra’s going on holiday and we’ve been getting busy.’

  Danny doesn’t answer.

  ‘I’m asking if you can give me a hand.’

  ‘I can’t,’ says Danny. I don’t know how he’s allowed to get away with saying things as completely untrue as this.

  ‘I can give you a hand,’ I say, half a vegetable spring roll in my mouth.

  ‘Please don’t talk with your mouth full,’ says Nick. ‘For all our sakes.’

  I swallow my food and say again, ‘I can help you.’

  ‘Isn’t there something you have to do during the week? Some kind of educational thing or something? I forget.’

  ‘I meant I can help in the evenings.’

  ‘Oh that’s right, school. You have to go to school.’

  ‘I said in the evenings.’

  ‘Danny can help.’

  ‘Wow,’ says Danny. ‘That’s amazing how you just completely ignored what I said. Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘It’s your business,’ says Danny. ‘I don’t think I’m obliged to work for you for free.’

  ‘Technically you’re a partner in it,’ Nick says. ‘It’s registered in both our names. And the debt is in both our names too. So. Bad luck.’

  ‘Why don’t you go and do a law course?’ I say to Danny, and immediately regret it. Nick carries on eating, looking intently at his fried rice, but Danny stops and looks at me.

  ‘What?’ he says.

  ‘I thought,’ I clear my throat. ‘I thought you said you wanted to do that once. When you finished uni. Do a law conversion course.’