Kook

by Chris Vick

  I noticed my rucksack on the back of the door. I reached in the pocket, and pulled out the small box, then the pebble of jade stone inside it.

  I got ready to get hit by a wave of emotion. But it didn’t come. That wave didn’t break.

  Still, I was glad to have it, to hold it. That stone was all I had of Jade, other than memories. This was real, something I could touch. I gripped it tight. I wanted more, something else. But I didn’t have anything.

  I sat on the bed. I zoned out.

  *

  I was woken from this zombie trance by the grunting of a lorry coming down the lane. The heavy whine and sigh of hydraulics as it stopped.

  A bin lorry. I looked out of the window. The green wheelie bin was full. There were bin bags piled round it too.

  Looking round the room, I suddenly had the idea something was missing, but I couldn’t think what. Then I thought, I wonder what Mum did with that old wetsuit, and with Old Faithful?

  She’d have chucked them. The bin men were coming to take them away. I didn’t care. I couldn’t see the board, but I thought it could be buried under the bags.

  But what else had she thrown away? Something. Something not in the boxes.

  I got up, and hobbled downstairs, feeling a pinching pain in my ribs with every step.

  Mum came straight out of the lounge.

  “Are you okay, Sam?”

  “Did you chuck any of my stuff out?”

  “I had to, Sam. A few old books, some clothes full of holes, that old sleeping bag of yours …”

  The sleeping bag Jade and me had slept in. That night, after the rave.

  “It stank, Sam,” said Mum. “It was filthy. I’ll get you a new one.”

  I went to the door, opened it, ran out.

  I couldn’t run properly: the pain was in my chest, needling. Then stabbing. I didn’t have shoes on. My socks got soaked in the puddles left by the rain.

  The lorry stopped. One of the men leapt off the back. He put his hands on the green bin handles.

  “Hey,” I shouted. I grabbed the bin off him and dragged it away.

  “Oi, kid, watcha doing?”

  I pushed the bin over, upended it. Everything inside slid to the ground with a squelching thud. Then I pulled the bin off and knelt in the mountain of black bags.

  “We ain’t gonna wait,” said the man. “You’ll have to put all that back in. Hey, son, you listening?”

  I pulled the black bags apart. Stinking tins and rotten food scraps scattered over the ground. I opened another one. Old clothes. And my sleeping bag. I yanked it out and walked back to the house.

  “You gonna clear that up?” shouted the man.

  Mum stood at the top of the drive, her mouth and eyes wide open.

  I went past her, past the house. I ran, half hobbling, down to the sea.

  I followed the narrow path along the cliff, till I reached the end, the point where the land didn’t go any further. I left the path, and climbed down the sloping rocks. I went to the edge. There was nothing beyond but a deep drop to the water below. I sat, with my legs over the edge. I took the sleeping bag out.

  Suddenly I felt like an idiot. It was just a dirty old sleeping bag, and I’d made a stupid mess and run off with it, like it was some precious treasure my mum had chucked out. I felt bad about that. Like a brat. It was just a smelly old sleeping bag.

  It did stink too.

  I lifted it up, and smelled it proper.

  Time stopped. The world upended, just like that bin.

  I was spun like I was in a wave.

  I smelled the earth. I smelled the damp, old mines. I smelled the smoke from the fire. Sweat. Us. Me. Jade.

  I buried my face in the sleeping bag. I shut the world out.

  I began to cry. My shoulders shuddering, my whole body shaking.

  “Jade. Oh fucking Christ. Jade.”

  Teg found me. She hugged me. I cried like a kid then. On Teg’s shoulder. Full on. I couldn’t stop.

  I WAS A MESS AFTER THAT.

  The world had upended. I was back in the storm, in the water. Hit by a wave so big I’d never get to the surface again.

  I didn’t know what was up, or down.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  I couldn’t sleep; I couldn’t stay awake.

  I spent all my time in my room.

  *

  After a few days, when I couldn’t stand Mum and Grandma’s kindness any more, I started going to the Cape.

  At first Mum followed me, I think to make sure I didn’t chuck myself over the edge. I hated how she couldn’t leave me alone, like she and Grandma and Teg were the nurses now. But I had to get some space. The Cape was the only place I could manage to be, right then. It was where we’d set off for the Devil’s Horns.

  After a while, when the worst had passed, I spent my time reading about drowning, storms, stuff like that. I got obsessed with it. Trying to make sense of it all.

  Every time a kid makes a sandcastle on a Cornish beach, there’s at least one piece of bone in it.

  I read that.

  People are taken by the sea. Their bones are ground to sand in the tides. They become part of the land, part of the sea. Eventually, the atoms inside them spread all over the world, into different things, even different people. It’s the same for all of us.

  I read about a lot of things while I was ‘recovering from my ordeal’ (that’s what the doctors called it).

  I stuffed my head with facts. About drowning, about wrecks, about the ocean.

  I couldn’t get enough of it. I was trying to process what had happened. The geek in me needed the facts.

  If a wave takes you deep enough, the weight of water above you holds you down. That must have been what had happened to me. If I hadn’t been taken up by some odd current…

  If the water had been a couple of degrees warmer, I’d have died. Cold water brings your heartbeat down, and your mouth and throat close up. Your body survives on a fraction of the oxygen it normally needs.

  If I’d lost a bit more blood. If I’d taken on more seawater. If I hadn’t – somehow – been washed back to the island.

  If. Lots of ifs.

  I got a handle on all the facts.

  Even hearing the voices could be explained. Seeing and hearing the dead, thinking you’re being helped by them. It’s a ‘well-recorded phenomenon’.

  So bit by bit, piece by piece, it all made sense. What had happened.

  But it all-making-sense really doesn’t fucking matter, does it?

  Because Jade is gone.

  She’s dead.

  And I killed her.

  All that time I thought I was following Jade, but it was me that led her to her death. It was me that found the chart. Me that told the others about the Horns. I could have pulled out at any time, I could have stopped it, tried to persuade them it was a dumb and dangerous idea. But I didn’t.

  I killed her. I have to live with that.

  THERE WAS AN INQUEST. And, after a time, when they finally gave up looking for a body, a memorial service.

  The inquest came first.

  The verdict was ‘accidental death’.

  It had been the biggest storm to lash the coast for nearly fifty years. It had destroyed boats, harbours, even parts of the coastline.

  It was Billy and Mick who’d told the coastguard about us. Once we’d been missing a day, word got out. They’d made the calls, probably to stop us surfing the Horns. Otherwise, we’d never have been rescued.

  The currents had been strong and fast. By the time the coastguard got to search for Jade properly, it was too late.

  She was gone.

  There was nothing left.

  *

  I didn’t mind the inquest process. I kind of sailed through it. But the memorial service at the old church in Penford put the fear in me. Big time.

  For a wimp’s reason too.

  Because I didn’t want to face Bob. How could I look him in the eyes?

  I was afraid of
that. More afraid than of any wave. Because he knew I’d taken Jade to her death. All that had come out at the inquest. And I felt it every moment of every day.

  Right then, if you’d given me a choice of being back in the storm or being in that damp, wintry old church, I’d have taken the storm.

  After the service, outside, Bob came up to me. I had the urge to scarper. But that would have been a shitty thing to do. Besides, before the Horns I’d decided never to not face up to that bastard. I’d have been letting Jade down if I backed away now.

  Bob was thinner than when I’d last seen him. Weirdly, he looked better than he normally did. I wondered if he’d stopped drinking.

  His eyes were loaded with sadness.

  I had an urge to start babbling, to say how sorry I was. But I didn’t. I stopped myself. I let him do the talking.

  He put a firm hand on my shoulder.

  “I know what she was like, Sam. I don’t need to say you shouldn’t have done what you done. You know that. I can see it on your face. The only thing I got to say to you, is… it weren’t your fault.” That almost set me off crying.

  “I tried to stop her, Bob. I tried.”

  “No one could stop her, lad. No one could stop her doing what she wanted. She was like her mum.”

  It hit me then that her mum wasn’t there. Her own mum, not turning up for the memorial service.

  “Where is she, today?” I said.

  “She couldn’t face it,” he said, shrugging.

  We stood, a while longer, not saying anything. There was too much to say. And maybe we’d talk about it all one day. Maybe. Though I had a feeling this might be the last time I’d ever see him.

  He turned to go, but paused, turned back to face me, thought for a moment, then smiled. For a second he actually looked happy.

  “There’s something she’d want you to have.”

  “Great,” I said. Whatever it was, I wanted it. Anything. Anything more than a sleeping bag and a stone.

  “It’s in the car; wait here,” he said.

  He came back with Tess, on her lead, with her eyes wide, mouth panting and that ‘Are we going somewhere?’ look on her face.

  She wagged her tail and nuzzled into my thigh, hassling me to stroke her.

  THE VICAR HAD SAID how we mourned ‘the loss of one so young’.

  He’d talked about ‘this terrible tragedy’.

  He’d banged on about how ‘her star shone bright, but briefly’.

  If the whole thing had been designed to make me, Skip and the others feel more guilty, more stupid, more terrible, they’d done a good job. We’d sat through it, and afterwards, we’d taken the sympathy everyone dished out. Only it felt like blame. That’s not how it was meant, but was how it felt.

  But that wasn’t the only reason I felt bad. The service wasn’t enough somehow. People in black suits and raincoats, mumbling prayers, pretending to sing. Shadows, sucking up the light, listening to some crap out of the Bible. It wasn’t proper. Not just because it was grim, but because it wasn’t Jade. It didn’t say anything about her. It didn’t mean anything.

  After Bob left Tess with me, Rag came up.

  “We’ve been talking. We’re meeting up at the Old Chapel,” he said, “to sort something else out.”

  “What do you mean something else?” I said.

  “Dunno yet. But something for her. And for us too.”

  So we met there, after we’d gone home and changed out of our jackets and ties. We ordered chips, but no one was hungry. They sat, steaming, going cold. So I fed them to Tess, one at a time.

  “We could have a bonfire on the beach,” said Skip.

  “We could have a party, for everyone that knew her,” said Rag.

  “We could make a cairn,” I said.

  “A what?” said Big G.

  “Like a monument of rocks, which you build, and put on top of a hill.” I was thinking of the tor, looking over the sea.

  “Lame. Why don’t we go for a surf, somewhere she really liked,” said Big G. “Sit in a circle in the water, like they do in Hawaii.”

  We came up with loads of ideas. But we couldn’t get into any of them. We couldn’t decide what we should do, where we should go, who we should invite.

  When the ideas dried up, we sat in silence.

  “Well. Let’s think about it,” said Big G, sighing. “Everyone puts in their vote tomorrow. If we get a clear fave, we do that. Yeah?”

  “Okay,” I said. Rag shrugged, as if to say, Why not? Big G stood. It was time to go.

  “Coming, Skip?” said Rag, standing.

  “I know what we should do,” said Skip, still sitting, staring into the empty mug in his hands.

  “What?” we all said.

  “Go back.”

  Big G froze with one arm in his jacket. Rag sat back down. Almost fell into his chair, like he’d been punched. Me and G sat back down too.

  “Back?” said Rag.

  Skip didn’t need to explain what he meant, or why we should do it. And once he’d said it, there was no other choice. It was a heavy idea. Going back to the Horns felt as big a deal then as the day we’d first decided to go.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts,” said Skip, “or life after death or anything but… but…”

  “But what?” said Big G.

  “We need closure, don’t we?” said Skip.

  “What the fuck does that mean?” said G, scowling.

  “It means saying goodbye, I guess.”

  *

  That old sea dog Pete took us in his boat, Sunrise.

  Just us. Me, Big G, Rag, Skip. And Tess.

  I offered Pete money when we got on board.

  “Thass all right,” he said, putting his hands in his pockets. “Wouldn’t be right.” He walked off to the wheel cabin.

  The first time, when me and Jade went, the sea had been green oil. When we’d gone in the storm, it had been dark and heavy.

  This time – the last time – it was different again. The day was torched with a light so strong it hurt my eyes. The wind was fast and sharp, blowing the water into peaks and salt spray I could taste.

  Gulls followed, reckoning we were on a fishing trip and waiting for scraps. But struggling, blown about like kites on a beach.

  We stood at the bow, watching the sea, feeling the chop and swell, and looking to the horizon. Not talking.

  I thought it’d be a trauma. I thought as soon as we saw the islands, it’d all come rushing back. Not just because of what had happened to Jade, but what I’d been through too, in the storm. But this was a different time, and it looked like a different place. I was heavy in the heart, sure. But this was better, so much better, than being crammed in some church, listening to stories about a god who couldn’t save you.

  Sunrise chugged around the Horns till we were just off the lighthouse island. We got into the boat Pete had towed behind, and me and Big G rowed us to shore.

  There was no way of getting in dry. We got soaked to the knees with the freezing spring water. Tess loved it. Barking and running and dipping in and out of the shore break.

  We checked the lighthouse first. There was the base, just as it had been before. The sea hadn’t done it any more damage. It had done its worst. But all our stuff had been washed away. All of it. There wasn’t even a black mark where we’d had the fire.

  Back outside, we stood blinking in the light. Was someone going to say something? Were we going to perform some ritual?

  “I’d like to say…” Rag started, but he couldn’t go on.

  “It’s all right, mate,” said Big G. He put a hand on Rag’s shoulder.

  Rag shook his head. “No, it isn’t.”

  Big G wasn’t the emotional type, but he hugged Rag then. He held his mate, and he comforted him.

  Me and Skip wandered off, Skip down to the shore, me climbing up to the highest point on the island, looking down on the reefs. But I couldn’t see under the surface. The water was too messed up by wind. I tried to remember wh
at it was like down there. But like I say, it felt like a different place.

  I zipped up my jacket, pulled my beanie down and buried my hands in my pockets.

  It felt strange, being there, but good. It was where Jade had died, but it was the last place I’d seen her too. I got a sharp tingle on the back of my neck thinking about her. I felt close to her, almost like I could feel her presence. It wasn’t a smell, or anything I could see, or hear. But it felt as real as something I could sense. Something of her, close by. Like she was there.

  I had the idea she would just come up out of the water, like that day we’d gone went tombstoning.

  “Fooled ya!” she’d say.

  I smiled at that. I looked down at the water, really feeling it; that she was there, that she’d just appear. I looked around me, as if to stop her before she sneaked up behind me, put her hands over my eyes and said, “Guess who?”

  It was overwhelming, this feeling. Like a tide.

  Then I told myself not to be stupid. That it was just emotion messing with my head. That this was all because I was where I’d last seen her. But still, I felt…

  “All right?” It was Skip. He came up beside me.

  “I guess. It’s weird being here. How’s Rag?”

  “Bawling like a girl. G’s looking after him. How are you, Sam? Really?”

  “I’m okay. It’s good to be here. It’s good to say…” I stopped myself from saying “goodbye”. Anger flooded up in me. From nowhere. I kicked a stone, sending it clattering down to the sea.

  “It’s mental, Skip. It’s bullshit. There’s no one to say goodbye to, is there? She’s not fucking here!” I felt angry, really angry, I didn’t know why. “And I don’t believe in ghosts. Nor God neither, Skip. Okay?”

  “Whatever, mate.”

  I grabbed the collar of his coat, put my face up to his.

  “I told you. There’s no one to say goodbye to. IS there?” He stood there, open-mouthed. A bit shocked by how pissed off I was. “I said, is there?”

  “I don’t know, Sam!” He took my hand and yanked it off him.

  I turned away, trying to stop the tears. Tess bounded up, licked my hand.

  Skip turned, walked off a few feet, keeping some distance, but watching me.

  “Stop it, you pussy,” I said to myself. I felt for the jade stone in my pocket. I squeezed it so hard it hurt. I looked out to the reef, to the point where that wave had broken.