by John Young
The result of my fantasy ski excursion earlier is that, even before Mum arrived back, I’m in chirpy mood. The whole Skeates–Dad episode has drifted away, for now. So much so that I barely notice taking my medication as I chat to Mum. We share a piece of cake – it’s a hell of a lot better than manky tuna. Mum tries to turn on the radio but of course it doesn’t work because I threw it against the wall last night. Stupid, selfish wee git. I pieced it back together, but I must have missed a few bits.
“Maybe it needs new batteries, Mum,” I say sheepishly.
Mum sighs and sets the radio back on the shelf. She walks to the front room and sits on her big old armchair.
“You alright, Mum?”
“Just tired, love. What’s that on your face?”
I lick my swollen lip. “I fell yesterday in the playground.”
“Really?” She thankfully (and surprisingly) doesn’t probe further.
No way am I telling her the truth. Apart from the shame of being beaten up by Skeates, she would have a full investigation going and I would never live that down.
After a while Mum starts to doze off. She looks pale. Probably tired from work and travel. I return to my bedroom and do a bit of homework, but I’m too distracted to read about the Highland Clearances. Despite the Skeates hangover from yesterday, I feel good. And the day gets even better when I hear the door slam for the second time, followed by Mum’s voice. “Connor, it’s Emma!” I jump up from the bed and get to my door in time to hear Mum saying, “Just go on up, love.”
Emo breezes up the stairs and passes by me into my room, wearing a huge smile – unlike her. And in her casual clothes she actually looks really cool. Boots, tights, short skirt, red tartan jacket with furry collar.
“What are you grinning at?” I ask.
“How was Mrs MacDonald?”
I groan. “If you could attach her lips to a dynamo she could power the whole island.”
She laughs and says, “Your mum’s back from Inverness. That’s good.”
“Yeah, she works shifts so… you know,” I say. I’m chuffed that Mum is home, but I don’t want to talk about her with a girl in my bedroom, do I?
Emma examines my room and then turns back to me. “Are you alright after what Skeates did to you?”
I nod. Alright now you’re here, I think. I don’t say it though. “Yeah. I’m not worried about him.”
“Why do you wind him up?”
I’m not sure how to answer this. Skeates annoyed me on the first day of high school by saying he would look out for me because I was sick. I hated that: it made me feel weak, spotlit for my cancer when I wanted to hide it. So I jumped him. That was the start, and it seems really foolish now, so I don’t tell Emo. I come up with a cock-and-bull story instead to try to make me look harder than I am.
“Because it makes me feel alive.” I read that in a book written by some adrenaline junkie sponsored by Red Bull who leaps off cliffs with a parachute. “I always wanted to go skiing and stuff,” I carry on explaining myself. “I watch those YouTube vids of extreme sports – you know, the ones where the guys ski down gullies at a million miles an hour with an avalanche chasing them?”
She nods.
“I love those, but I know I’d never be able to even attempt that sort of stuff, so Skeates-baiting became my extreme sport. Do you reckon I could get sponsored by Red Bull?”
She laughs at my crap chat.
“Or I could make millions off a website where other sickos can post vids of their exploits.”
Emo has had enough of my nonsense and turns to the bookshelves. Two of my walls are floor-to-ceiling books and CDs. Mum bought the shelves off Gumtree for a fiver and her and a mate installed them. It was a laugh watching them do DIY. I’m surprised the whole house didn’t come down. Even after all the banging and swearing and sticky plasters the shelves aren’t quite straight. She’s awesome, my mum, when she’s on target. The problem is she misses it quite often.
“Wow, look at all these CDs.”
“Most of them are my mum’s from the eighties and nineties,” I say as she picks out Simple Minds and slots it into my ancient CD player. ‘Waterfront’ comes on first, then ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’.
“I love this one,” she says and plays it on repeat a couple of times.
As we listen to Simple Minds, Emma flicks through my books. “Have you read them all?”
“Oh yeah. What else do you do when you’re stuck in bed twenty-four seven? Books take you somewhere else.”
Emo picks three books at random and we sit back and chat about them. The first one is Misery, Stephen King. She laughs and flicks the book open. “And you talk about me being weird? I remember seeing the film, it was on last Halloween. It gives me the shivers just thinking about it.”
“That’s sort of the point.” I put on a really gruesome laugh and pretend to choke Emo. As I touch her I feel shy and awkward. I back off, embarrassed. “Anyway, it’s a good book.”
I see her swallowing and I can’t guess what she’s thinking, but she stays where she is and pretends to read. I can tell by the weird silence that she isn’t taking anything in, but I don’t know if it’s because she thinks I’m an idiot, or because she feels that shy-awkward feeling too. Whatever. I’m not asking her – I change the subject. Another moment of opportunity passes.
During my inane chat Mum brings us up a sandwich.
“Aw Mum, tuna! I hate tuna!” I chide.
“Well you eat enough of it, love,” she says. “I’m always having to buy more.”
“Mmmmmm,” says Emma, not helping, “I love tuna. It’s my favourite. Thanks, Mrs Lambert.”
“Call me Fiona,” says Mum.
“Thanks, Fiona.”
I glare at Emma and she laughs at me. We finish the lunch and chat for a bit. Emma noses around the room and finds a box with a little machine inside.
“What’s this?” She holds up my old nasal gastric feeder.
“I used to stick that up my nose.” I grin. “The nurses get the tube and shove it like this all the way down until it hits my stomach.” I mime squeezing the tube through my head and gag in the process while laughing at Emo’s reaction.
She drops the machine. “Yuck!”
“Don’t worry, it’s been cleaned. That’s how I was fed for three months. And how I will be fed if I don’t behave myself.”
The sight of the box reminds me of many things: the smell of the chemical-mix food and the whiney whirring noise it makes all night. You can’t feed sickos like me too fast because we just bring it all back up again, so the pump measures a set amount over a period of time.
“Did you have to sleep with it in?”
“Oh yeah. My mum had to unblock the tubes at night because it beeps like crazy when something sticks. I should have given it back to the hospital. I don’t need it any more, but they haven’t asked me to return it.” I add, “It’s a good reminder to keep taking the drugs.”
“Really?”
I nod. “I had another line in my chest for drugs. Look!” I peel up my shirt and show her a small round scar on the left of my chest. “I used to have a tube right here. They squirted all sorts in there: blood, medicine, heroin… It saves having a new needle hole in my arm ten times a day. Before that my arms used to look like Renton’s from Trainspotting.”
She stares wide-eyed at me, reaches over and touches the rough flesh. Her touch is so soft and it sends a wave through me like nothing I’ve ever felt before. She takes her hand away and the feeling goes.
I miss it.
“It’s so neat,” she says, meaning the surgeons did a great job, but I say: “Aye, it’s cool isn’t it?”
She laughs at me.
I love the fact that she’s interested. I’m about to go into all the details about tastes and chemical smells, but her phone pings. She reads the message.
“I have to go. My aunt is coming for tea.” She picks up her coat.
“Are you about later?” I ask shee
pishly. I know she’ll be going out as it’s the weekend, and I feel foolish asking. She won’t want to spend Saturday night in with me.
“Nope, afraid not, I’m going to the cinema with Isla and Caitrin later.”
I shrug. Reject! I’m used to that by now. Even so, I feel embarrassed.
“I would ask you to join us but it’s a rom-com and I don’t see you living it down if word got around Stornoway that you go to girlie movies!” She laughs as she pulls on her tartan jacket, waving bye as she leaves the room. I listen to her chatting to my mum for a minute before a final “See you!”
The sound of the door closing gives me a strange feeling. Even though Mum’s here, I feel lonelier than ever.
I join my mum in front of the TV. We watch Saturday night crap designed for people who are too dull to have places to go and friends to see. I cook pasta for us both ’cause Mum still looks wiped out. I take my meds and we’re both asleep before the latest Z-lister is kicked off the show for rubbish dancing.
***
The next morning, I have breakfast alone. There’s no sign of Mum. I worry she must have come down with something, so at 11 a.m. I bring her up toast and tea. She’s content enough for a wee nibble so I leave her and make a half-hearted attempt at solving Monday’s quadratic equations. I usually secretly enjoy maths, but today I’m distracted with thoughts of Emma. I’m both excited and embarrassed after our ‘moment’ yesterday. An observer would’ve thought nothing had happened, but something did. I redden as I remember my failed and clumsy attempt at asking her round.
Mum appears about midday whilst I’m still brooding.
“Hi Mum, how are you feeling?”
She smiles weakly. I notice that her hands are shaking. “I must have a bug or something.”
I make her a jam sandwich. “Want to watch a film?”
“OK.”
“You choose, Mum.”
“Casablanca.”
“Serious?”
She nods. “It was your dad’s favourite, you know?”
I didn’t know that and my face must show it. “He took me to see it in the cinema. It was a nostalgia night. Afterwards he bought the DVD.” Her eyes glisten. “He could be romantic.”
It seems strange to me that Mum knows so well the man I never got to know, that she still has feelings for him and good memories to hold them together. And it annoys me that she gets to see him when I don’t. She never tells me when she’s going to visit him. She just sneaks off when she’s working on the mainland. I think this might be the right time to ask the question again. I’m nervous because this conversation always results in an argument.
This time is no exception – it all turns to shite quicker that I thought possible.
“Can we go and see him, Mum?” I say. “I can barely remember him.”
“I’m sorry. No.”
“Why not?” I shout, suddenly furious.
“I promised him that you wouldn’t see him in prison,” she shouts back, in tears now. I suddenly realise she’s been on the verge of crying since arriving home.
“Why?”
“I’ve told you before, it wouldn’t do anyone any good for you to see him in prison.”
“You’ve seen him and it hasn’t done you any harm!” I yell, but I feel terrible for saying that when I see the stress on her face.
She sniffs, doesn’t reply directly. “He’ll be out soon enough.”
“When?”
“I’m not having this discussion with you again, Connor, I’m too tired.”
Her voice is weak so I don’t bother arguing, just shout in frustration, kick the table and head out. I slam the door and hobble downtown.
It’s one of those dank February days where it isn’t really raining, but the air is so wet I feel soaked through before I reach the end of the road. I usually love dreich days like this as the town smell hangs in the air: seaweed, fish and peat smoke. Not long after we moved to Stornoway, when all the terrible stuff started happening, I used to sit on the pier and imagine I was at sea, far away from everything that was going on. We’ve had four days of haar this week and now a good fog-clearing wind beats behind me. In a few hours’ time the air will be crisp and sweet, and townsfolk will thank the Lord that they live in the most wonderful place on Earth. Not that I will feel thankful. I’m too angry. Mainly at myself for having no self-control.
I stomp my way about town to burn off the rage.
The island is beautiful and quiet, aye, but everywhere has its dodgy places. I walk past a row of shops and the arcade called Slots-o-Fun. A guy named Jenson was stabbed there last year by ‘Soapy’, the manager. It had the whole town blethering about it, though not to the police, because they never lifted Soapy.
Everyone knows that two big blond brothers, known as the Troll Twins, sell drugs from there and only crazy folk go in to waste their money on the fixed fruit machines. The Trolls are only a bit older than me – seventeen, eighteen – but huge, like they’ve been down the gym since they were twelve. I wouldn’t mess with them. The Troll Twins look Norwegian, hence the stupid name. They’re really from Shetland, so maybe their great-great-grandad was a Viking or something.
It takes me an hour or so to burn off steam and eventually I walk home with the aim of apologising to Mum. When I enter the house, it’s silent. Everything is just as I left it, even the table hasn’t been straightened after I kicked it. I check upstairs and find Mum is flat out asleep. I take my meds, eat some beans on toast and go to bed. I text Emma:
“How r tricks?”
“Film was crap.”
“Not as crap as my weekend.”
“What happened?”
“Usual shit.”
“Will I come by yours tmrw morn?”
“c u then.”
I feel bad for the grumpy text. I don’t want to load her with my worries and I don’t want Emo to remember me as a moaner. I think about texting something funny but can’t find the right words. I want to talk about yesterday. Instead I throw the phone on the floor.
I try dozing but the bogieman joins me. That’s the name my mum gives to night-time voices that keep you awake. Tonight the bogieman is Skeates, who planted a seed in my head on Friday that has been silently growing into a real jungle.
The insomnia’s worse than I can remember since my sister died. The thought of Erica riles me even more. And inevitably my thoughts return to Dad. I can’t stop thinking about him. Maybe it’s because Mum told me he’ll be out soon. Like when you need a pish really badly and it gets more desperate the closer you get to a toilet.
Fitful sleep eventually hits. Lulled by a dangerous toxic cocktail of anger, fear, loss and disappointment. I don’t know yet how dangerous it will be.
Chapter 4
Needlework
Monday morning, as usual, comes too soon. I wake fixated on two things: Skeates and Dad. These two seeds have been germinating all night. I bring Mum a cup of tea. She’s fast asleep so I leave it on her bedside cabinet. She clearly needs a rest.
I do my medicine stuff on autopilot. My mood lifts a little with the simple matter of breakfast afterwards. No tuna today: toast, yippee! Butter, oh yeah! And marmalade, just the ticket. Thick, juicy orange marmalade. I hold up my gooey toast in a grateful salute to Mum and head out the door.
Emma is waiting outside my house and I put my bogieman firmly to bed. He doesn’t sleep too well either though, and I can feel him tapping at the back of my head as we walk to school. Skeates, Dad, Skeates, Dad, Skeates, Dad, anger, fear, loss, disappointment.
“You alright, Connor?” Emo asks. It’s her usual greeting, but this morning her tone makes me answer properly. It’s touching and the bogieman doesn’t like it so he shuts up.
Emma pulls her sleeves down over her hands, as if she wants to hide them. She really doesn’t need to hide anything. I want to tell her that but can’t, because I don’t have the nerve. Her school uniform is personalised with a token non-standard jumper to show independence and rebellion. Black
instead of navy; not much of a rebellion, but being Emo what other colour is she likely to choose?
“Yeah, I’m great, you?” I reply and start walking towards school.
She grabs my arm. “Sure?”
I put my head down and look at the ground. “Yeah,” I say. She knows I’m not OK, and holds on to me, waiting for me to say something. I can’t say what’s wrong, because I don’t even understand how I feel. I’m embarrassed for feeling cosy towards her at the weekend. Rain rolls down the back of my neck and I shiver.
So much for the optimist.
I look up, nod, and we begin the hobble to school.
My house is on the east side of town, Emo’s just to the north. She comes out of her way to meet me, which is cool. Luckily Skeates lives to the west.
“Your mum still home today?” asks Emo.
“Yeah,” I sigh. “She was asleep when I left. I think she’s working again tomorrow.” I don’t mention the argument or Dad. Emo has heard it all before. “It was great to have her about at the weekend.”
Return of the optimist.
“What have we got this morning?” I change the subject.
“Physics. At least Skeates won’t be there. He never goes to physics.”
I smile at her observation. For all Emo’s dark looks, she’s magic at cheering me up. We traipse our way slowly to the physics labs and I try to remember what we are studying.
“Did we have any homework?”
“Not for this class, for Thursday. We’re watching a video about future breakthroughs in science. Neb told me last week. I think he has marking to do.”
“Brilliant,” I say. But I should have known our happy vibes would be short-lived. “Oh shit! You spoke too soon.”
Emo looks to see Skeates walking behind us into the lab. His one concession to the school uniform is a loosely knotted tie. He wears jeans, white shirt, sweater and jacket (not a school blazer but close enough). I’ve seen him wearing that outside school too, like he thinks it’s a trendy outfit. The bogieman wakes up and shouts at me from inside.