The Bubble Boy

by Stewart Foster

  ‘Where did you get that?’ I ask.

  Amir puts his finger to his lips. ‘Took it when you weren’t looking. Want my children to see what you look like. But don’t tell anyone.’

  ‘Amir,’ I say. ‘You know I’m good at keeping secrets.’

  ‘Yes, you are.’ He does the buttons up on his shirt. ‘Now what we do? Ah yes, I show you around.’

  We turn into a room. A huge TV is on in the corner. The three children are climbing on top of each other in a pile on the settee. Amir taps one of them on the shoulder.

  A little girl turns round. She’s got big round eyes and a gap between her teeth.

  ‘Say hello to Joe.’

  Her smile grows wider and she waves at me. ‘Hello, Joe.’

  ‘Joe, this is Ajala.’

  ‘Hi, Ajala.’

  She smiles and waves again. I lift up my hand.

  ‘Amir, can she see me?’

  ‘No,’ says Amir. ‘She just see picture, we connect camera for you next time.’

  ‘Great,’ I say.

  Amir turns his head. Two boys jump in front of him. They both have dark hair and brown eyes. One has a mole on his cheek, the other is wearing glasses. Amir introduces me to his sons, Shukra and Guru. They say hello and jump up and down again.

  ‘Do you want to watch TV with us?’ Shukra points. Blue Peter is on the TV.

  ‘No,’ says Amir. ‘Joe’s got his own TV; he watches it all the time. Let’s show him around the house instead.’

  Shukra reaches up and holds Amir’s hand and they walk out of the room. Amir glances back. Ajala and Guru follow behind. They all walk into the dining room. There’s a big table in the middle with six chairs. There are boxes piled high in the corner containing washing powder and disinfectant and smaller boxes of Mars Bars and Snickers. I ask Amir why he’s got so much stuff. He tells me it was cheap to buy loads; it’s not usually in the dining room but he’s decorating the kitchen. He walks back through the hall and into the kitchen. Wallpaper hangs off the walls. Abha is standing next to the oven with a saucepan of water boiling on top. The picture goes misty. Amir reaches up with a cloth and wipes the lens.

  Abha picks up a wooden spoon.

  ‘I think we come back later,’ he says.

  Abha smiles. ‘No, Amir. Come here.’ She walks towards the camera and puts her hand on Amir’s arm. ‘I think you need to calm down.’

  ‘We just having fun.’

  Abha turns her head to one side. ‘I know,’ she says. ‘I’m just saying.’ She reaches up and strokes the side of Amir’s face and looks at him for a long time.

  ‘I okay,’ whispers Amir.

  Abha smiles. Amir leans forward and kisses her forehead.

  ‘Oops, sorry Joe, forgot you were there!’

  Amir is so funny.

  ‘Now, where was I going? Ah yes. Upstairs.’

  Abha laughs and tuts at him. Amir turns back into the hallway and starts to climb the stairs. There are pictures on the walls. Amir points to them as he walks.

  ‘This is my father, and this is my mother . . . and my grandfather and my grandmother, and this is all of us outside the Taj Mahal.’ He presses his finger against the picture and tells me it was taken three years ago before his grandmother died. The camera stays still for a while, then Ajala tugs on his arm and says she wants to show me her room. She runs across a landing. The floors are wood and the walls are painted purple. We go through a doorway into a room. Ajala is stood in the middle. She turns in a circle and points at her bed and her wardrobe, then at a red rug on the floor that’s covered with dolls. She picks one up, tells me its name is Simba then she opens her wardrobe. It’s full of bright dresses and DVDs. She asks me if I want to borrow any. I laugh.

  ‘I don’t think your dresses would fit me!’

  ‘I meant the DVDs, silly.’

  Amir laughs and tells her I’ve got loads of DVDs already.

  She holds up a blue pen. ‘Can he have this, then?’

  Amir takes the pen, then he leads me out onto the landing and into another room where the walls are painted blue. Shukra and Guru are laughing as they bounce up and down on their beds.

  The camera shakes from side to side.

  ‘Nothing much to see in here,’ says Amir. ‘Just a mess.’ He turns in a slow circle. I see Amir’s reflection in a window and posters of Transformers all over the walls. Shukra picks up Ultra Magnus, fires his guns at the camera and then turns him into a truck. I tell him I used to have one. I don’t think he heard me.

  ‘Mad,’ says Amir. ‘They drive me mad.’ He turns and we go back onto the landing. Amir takes a deep breath, then another. The Blue Peter tune is playing downstairs. Amir shows me a closed door and tells me it’s his bedroom and he shows me another door with ‘Bathroom’ written on a sign and a picture of bluebells underneath.

  ‘The bathroom,’ he says. ‘You want to see in there?’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘Then that’s it,’ says Amir. ‘I show you everything, Joe!’ He walks along the landing and stops by a mirror at the top of the stairs. His hair is wet and his skin is shiny. He wipes his forehead on his arm.

  ‘Oops, sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘I’m still here.’

  ‘So, you meet my family.’

  ‘I really like them, they’re nice. Not as mad as you!’

  ‘That’s good!’ Amir smiles so wide that it fills my room. I wait for him to say something, but he just looks down at his feet then back up to the mirror. When he’s here with me he doesn’t stop talking but now it’s like he doesn’t know what to say, and after everything he’s shown me I don’t know what to say either.

  Abha shouts something I don’t understand. The children push past Amir and run down the stairs.

  ‘Have to go,’ he says.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Did you enjoy it? Better than orangutans?’

  ‘Yeah! It was great. I like your family. I’d like to meet them for real one day.’

  ‘Maybe you will. Maybe you get a special suit like your friend.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I told you the ESA haven’t replied.’

  ‘The ESA? They no good, they fly a satellite all the way to Mars and crash into a mountain.’

  I laugh.

  ‘It’s true. We find something else.’

  ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘What do you mean you’re okay? Don’t you want to go outside?’

  ‘Yes, but I like what you did.’

  Amir smiles. ‘Me too,’ he says. ‘I think they all like you.’

  Abha shouts again.

  ‘Coming!’Amir lifts his hands up to his head. ‘I’m sorry. Really have to go.’

  He takes the camera off his head and the screens go blurred.

  ‘Amir?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘That’s okay . . . Oh, Joe . . . I nearly forget.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t forget to watch Jim.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The night security guard.’

  ‘But, Amir. I’m tired.’

  ‘But you try? He worth it.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Goodnight Joe.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  I press the remote and the screens come back on. Jim the security guard is sat reading a book in reception. He turns a page and takes a bite out of a sandwich. Another security guard walks towards him and they talk for a while. Jim circles his finger in the air. The other security guard nods then walks down the corridor and gets in the lift. A minute later he appears on screen 9. He walks up and down the corridors checking the doors, then gets back into the lift and does the same on the second floor. I look back at screen 1. Jim’s still reading and eating. On all the other screens the corridors are quiet and empty, except for two porters talking outside the operating theatre door. I look back at screen 1. The reception is empty. Jim is walking down the corridor with his book in his hand. He stops an
d pushes the toilet door open. I don’t know why Amir told me to watch him. He hasn’t done anything funny yet.

  I yawn and rest my head on my pillow. My room is empty, dark and cold. I think of Amir and his family. For a while it was like they were all in here with me, laughing and talking. I close my eyes. I imagine Amir sitting at the table. I can see Shukra, Ajala and Guru smiling with their knives and forks in their hands. Abha holds out her hand and tells me to pass her my plate. Ajala asks me if she can get me some water. I nod. Abha passes my plate back. It’s piled high with chicken and potatoes. She smiles. ‘It’s nice to have you here, Joe.’

  Amir picks up a glass and holds it in the air. ‘Friends,’ he says.

  I nod. My headphones slip down onto my neck. I open my eyes. They’ve all disappeared like ghosts.

  11 years, 3 months and 7 days

  It’s 9 o’clock in the morning and the doctors have already been and gone. They think I’m getting better; my whites are back up over 3000 and my temperature is going down. I feel better too. I can walk around the room without holding onto my bed and they’re letting me go to the toilet without a nurse having to wait outside. Dr Moore said he thinks the worst is over. He smiled and ruffled my hair when he said that. Then he looked at my screens and shook his head.

  ‘Young man,’ he said. ‘You might be feeling better but I think you should give your eyes a rest.’

  ‘I will,’ I said. (I won’t.)

  I’ve been watching the screens all week. First I watched all my favourite films one after the other. I watched Thor beat up Loki and throw him off a cliff; I watched Captain America, the Falcon and Black Widow take down Hydra, and Greg came and sat with me to watch Spidey stop the Lizard. The next day I searched through all the channels but all I could find was the news from all the countries in the world and talk shows with people shouting at each other in languages I couldn’t understand.

  I’ve been watching the CCTV too. The men digging the road outside have passed the hospital doors and are on their way to Starbucks. It’s got so hot that they’ve bought in huge floodlights so they can work at night. Two days ago a truck delivered three massive rolls of copper. Amir said it’s to increase the magnetic field so the alien ship can hover and not actually touch the ground. He said it’s called Maglev. I looked it up on my laptop. It didn’t say anything about aliens or spaceships but there’s a railway being built with magnets to propel trains in Japan.

  The door clicks open. I pick up the remote.

  Greg walks in and glances at the screens. A JCB jerks along the road, lowers its claw and digs at the ground.

  ‘Mate, come on, you’ve got to get dressed sometime.’ He puts clean clothes on the back of my chair.

  ‘But I like it.’

  ‘I know, but do you have to watch this?’

  ‘No.’ I press screen 8.

  Greg laughs. The picture changes to the hospital door. The woman on reception is outside talking to the security guard.

  ‘I think he’s going to ask her out,’ I say. ‘He walked her to the end of the road last night.’

  ‘Mate, Keith’s been walking Julie to the end of the road for months. He’s not going to ask her out. It’s just an excuse for him to have another cigarette.’

  ‘But he bought her a kebab!’

  ‘Ha, well she’s bound to say yes, then.’

  On the screen, Keith says something I can’t hear. Julie laughs. I can’t hear that either but she’s still smiling when I switch to screen 3 and see her sit back down at her desk.

  Greg wasn’t supposed to know about the CCTV but one night I fell asleep and he came in and saw Jim reading his book. I thought my screens would be taken away but Greg says he won’t tell anyone. I still have to turn the screens over if anyone else comes in. Amir is trying to find some sensors that will turn them off when my eyelids drop. His brother is working on it. He thinks he can get me one of the eye sensors that soldiers use to fire guns on war-zone simulators.

  I press channel 12. A laundry van arrives and reverses up to the back of the building. Two men get out and slide back two big doors.

  ‘Mate.’

  I look up. Greg’s standing by the door.

  ‘I said, I’ll be back in to watch the football later, and don’t forget your documentary will be on.’

  The two men load bags of dirty laundry into the back of the van. I think the young one has a girlfriend because he’s sat at the back of the van texting on his phone, or maybe he has a best friend and sends him texts all the time. The older man throws a bag down and says something. The young one shakes his head and puts his phone in his pocket.

  My laptop beeps. It’s Henry. He’s been quiet. His doctors and the people from NASA have been building up his energy levels and he’s been walking around in his room getting used to his suit.

  Hey Joe, what are you doing?

  14:06

  Watching people in the street.

  14:06

  You’re mad

  14:07

  It’s good. Better than real TV

  14:07

  Better than Avengers Assemble?

  14:08

  No. Not that good. How are you?

  14:08

  I’m OK. Boots are OK, too. Helmet’s a bit small.

  Face looks like a watermelon.

  14:08

  Ha

  14:09

  My folks are coming today.

  Last time Dad can see me before I go to the mall.

  Have you got your suit yet?

  14:10

  No. I don’t think Amir meant it.

  14:10

  Hasn’t he done anything?

  14:11

  Not really. Just checked my trainer size and the label inside my pyjamas.

  14:11

  NASA measured me up with lasers and stuff, but if your trainers and pyjamas fit it’s kind of the same thing.

  14:12

  I’m not sure.

  14:12

  Maybe it’s a joke.

  14:12

  No, Amir’s not mean.

  14:12

  Exactly. So it’s true. Where’d’ya like to go?

  14:13

  Empire State Building! Hang out with Spidey.

  14:13

  Ha. Be great. Shame it’s in New York.

  14:13

  Yeah

  14:13

  Hey, it’s only in the next state.

  You could pop over and see me.

  14:14

  Ha!

  14:14

  You told anyone you’re going out?

  14:15

  No. Don’t want to worry Beth, and Amir said if anyone found out he could lose his job.

  14:15

  True. Did he say where you’re going?

  14:16

  Not really. He said there’s a mall in Enfield.

  Most of the time he just watches the planes.

  14:16

  Weird.

  14:16

  Do hope it’s true.

  14:16

  Me too.

  14:17

  Hey, my folks just arrived.

  14:17

  I’ll get off .

  14:17

  No. It’s OK. Go to Screen.

  14:17

  We turn our cameras on.

  I see Henry smiling and hear the sound of people talking. Henry turns his laptop around. His mum and dad are standing by the door wearing white overalls. They wave at me and smile. Henry’s mum’s got blonde hair like Henry and his dad is going bald. Henry says it’s because he worries about paying for the hospital treatment so much. Henry’s room and treatment isn’t free like mine. To begin with his parents had some insurance but it wasn’t enough. So now his dad has to work away from home for months on an oil rig near Nova Scotia in Canada. It’s a long way from Philadelphia – it takes five hours on a plane. His dad looks so tired that I think he might just have got off it. They smile and wave and I wave back. Then they walk over to Henry, tell
him they’ve missed him and they love him. Henry opens his arms, says he loves them too and they hug one another for a long time. It’s like they’ve forgotten I’m here but I don’t care because if my mum and dad could come and visit me I would hug them for a long time too. Eventually they pull away.

  ‘Where’s Matt?’ I ask.

  ‘Don’t think he’s here, Joe,’ says Henry.

  I hear someone giggling. Henry turns the camera towards the ground. His brother is crouched down at the end of his bed.

  ‘Pow!’ He points his fingers at me, pretending he’s got a gun in his hand.

  I clutch my hand to my chest and fall back on my bed. ‘You got me,’ I say.

  Henry laughs. ‘You can’t shoot, Joe. He’s a superhero. He can catch bullets between his fingers even if they travel at the speed of light.’

  Me and Matt laugh.

  I haven’t seen Henry’s brother for three months. He’s half Henry’s age and half as big, but his face is so chubby it almost fills the screen. I turn my laptop around.

  ‘Hey Matt, I’ve got something to show you.’

  I flick the TV monitors on.

  ‘Wow, how did you get all of those?’

  ‘My nurse,’ I say. ‘He brought them in while I was sleeping.’

  Matt’s face breaks into a grin. ‘It’s cool . . . Hey Mom, Joe’s got twelve TVs!’

  Henry’s mum’s smiling face creeps in the edge of my screen. ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘Can I get more in my bedroom?’

  ‘No, Matt,’ she says. ‘I think one TV is enough.’

  Matt sticks out his lip and I laugh. I wish I had a brother. I love Beth but it’d be great if I had a brother too. I wonder if he would look like me. We could play together in our back garden and run down the road and buy sweets from the corner shop. We could eat them and then play pretend war on the way home. He could be The Goblin and I would chase after him as he zigzagged across the road on his hover board and I’d catch him in my webs and we’d both nearly die laughing as we rolled on the ground. But Mum and Dad thought it was too risky to have another kid, just in case it had the same disease as me. There was a fifty per cent chance that it would. I wish they had, though. Henry’s mum and dad were told the same too. Sometimes when he annoys Henry, Henry tells me Matt was a mistake. I think he’s a good mistake.