Farewell Tour of a Terminal Optimist

by John Young

  “What’s he up to?” whispers Emo.

  I shrug as hate wins again. “Hey, Skeates! Neb won’t know who you are!”

  “Am no here for Neb,” he says, putting on a shite Weegie accent.

  “It’s ‘I am not here for Neb’,” I say. “You should try English lessons too.”

  Skeates hunches like he’s going to punch me, but Emo jumps in before he erupts. “What are you doing here, Skeates? You never go to any science lessons.”

  “It’s my class, little Miss Misery,” he snaps back.

  “What’s your game?” I say.

  “What are you, my parole officer?” Skeates grins. “I need a new recipe for my magic mushroom soup.” He swaggers across the classroom.

  Even from behind he looks menacing. Skeates is a figure of contrasts. He’s scarred, tall, yet stocky because he’s so broad. Not ugly, his face is shiny, smooth and mature. I can feel his adrenaline from here. He deserves his place as the one to fear in our school, but I’m not done with him yet.

  “That would be chemistry for magic mushrooms, not physics,” I say. “You’re mixing up your sciences.”

  Emo kicks me to shut me up. I’m surprised Skeates hasn’t lost his temper yet and I wonder whether he’s holding out for something.

  Our teacher, Mr MacAskill, AKA Neb because of his huge nose, arrives and shouts the class quiet. The classroom is a typical school physics lab with island units and stools, science kit on the desks. Skeates makes a beeline for the stool beside me.

  “Hop it,” he says to Logan, who usually sits next to me. Logan hesitates for a second before moving to another island.

  Skeates leans along the bench and whispers in my ear, “Yer dad’s locked up ’cause he’s a nutcase.”

  I swing for Skeates but he easily avoids it and laughs. “Calm down, Taytie. That temper of yours will have you in trouble.”

  Neb drones for a bit and Skeates focuses his attention on the teacher. “Sir, is it true that you can smoke a cigarette in the shower without getting it wet?” He looks around for laughs, but as Skeates’s usual mates aren’t here no one joins in his japes. He isn’t deterred.

  “Arggh!” I shout. Pain rips through my buttock and I nearly fall off my stool. I twist to look at my arse, thinking I’ve been stung by a wasp. I turn sharply to Skeates, who’s holding up a compass needle beside his manic grin.

  “What’s up, Taytie?” he asks.

  “Piss off, Skeates.” I rub my backside where he stabbed me.

  Skeates asks a question to distract Neb from my shout. “Hey Sir, how do you kill a mushroom?”

  Neb turns to see what the issue is. Not seeing anything obvious he mumbles and returns to setting up the screen.

  “The video we’re about to watch is about singularity.”

  Rustling behind me.

  “Shit!” I scream.

  “What’s wrong, Lambert?” asks Neb.

  “Nothing, just cramp.” I hate Skeates and I hate being stabbed in the backside, but I’m not a squealer. Neb’s one of those teachers who doesn’t know how to communicate with sick kids. We can get away with anything.

  “What is singularity, Sir?” asks Shutup, a skinny, chatty kid. Shutup loves science. I reckon he’ll be a professor or nuclear engineer or something like that when he’s older. He sits in the front row to hear what goes down in class, with Emo beside him. Skeates and me are behind them.

  “Piss off!” I shout. Skeates has jabbed me with the needle again.

  Neb snaps back to keep quiet.

  “What you going to do, Taytie, hit me with your caliper?” whispers Skeates.

  I try to ignore him. A headache is brewing: the type of headache that precedes a fit and I begin to panic. I can’t control fits and I begin to shake. I take out a pencil to write notes to distract myself from the growing pressure in my skull. It’s nauseating. My eyes cloud over.

  “Arggh!” I shout again with another jag to the arse. I turn to glare at Skeates. I can see two of him and my head is reeling. The feeling is familiar and I know what’s coming. I feel like I’m drowning, my breath coming in rapid gasps.

  “I’ll be waiting for you outside, Taytie,” says Skeates.

  Neb continues with his introduction, ignoring the class noise. “Singularity,” he explains, “is the state of the world when we reach a position of interconnected super-intelligence helped by genetics and technology. There will be a split in the human race: those who have access and those who do not.”

  “Class war, Sir!” shouts Skeates.

  Neb’s eyebrows rise over the top of his glasses. “Leslie Skeates, are you supposed to be in my class?”

  Skeates grins. “Aye, check your register.”

  Neb doesn’t bother. He doesn’t want a row with Skeates. Skeates isn’t beyond taking a punch at a teacher. “Inequality, yes Leslie.”

  I burst out laughing at this, “Leslie? Leslie Skeates! I forgot you had a girl’s name. Leslie Skeates, ya girl!”

  There are some giggles in the class, but I worry that I’m digging my way to doom. I’m stuffed anyway so… live in the moment. Skeates says nothing. He doesn’t react, which again makes me think he has bigger plans.

  “It is a sad fact that there is great inequality in basic needs,” Neb continues, “in particular medicine. As medicine becomes more advanced, hence more costly, those inequalities will increase.”

  My skull is near bursting.

  “It’s a good point, Leslie,” Neb continues.

  I snigger loudly; teasing him eases the pressure in my skull.

  “Girl.” My voice sounds slurred to me.

  Neb carries on, keen to get the vid started so he can red-line his papers.

  A screaming pain wangs up my leg. “Argghhggh!”

  “What’s the problem, Lambert?” Neb threatens something, which I ignore because Skeates is at the other ear, working his way in.

  He rams the needle in harder and more aggressively, angered after that ribbing about his name, sensing that he’s making progress. He grips the compass firmly in his fist and prepares for a really big one next time.

  I put my head in my hands, the little sparks that set off brain instability are going wild and my head throbs like a chainsaw.

  The rest of Neb’s chat doesn’t go in. I’ve reached tipping point – consciousness replaced with buzzing and sparks, the pain so severe I can’t see or think.

  Skeates rams the compass into my buttock as hard as he can.

  I’m still gripping my pencil hard. I plead, “Please stop, please.”

  I don’t realise that I’m saying it out loud. Skeates thinks I’m pleading with him and laughs. My pencil is about to break.

  “Stop it, stop the pain.” I hold my head, both fists clenched. I whisper over and over again, “Please stop, please stop…” and I don’t realise that the whole class is looking at me whispering like a gibbering idiot.

  Skeates finishes me off. The needle goes deep into my leg. His fist just under the worktop so no one can see.

  I scream, fit-spin round and jump Skeates.

  Skeates yelps.

  I have no idea what’s going on. I hold on to him and scream and kick for all I’m worth until I eventually fall to the floor, skittering around like a floundering fish, shrieking and squawking until I lapse into unconsciousness. Dark sweeps in well before I stop thrashing.

  Chapter 5

  All About Me

  I wake in Stornoway hospital and scream. Mrs MacDonald is staring at me and I make her jump so hard she falls off her seat.

  “Are you alright?” we both say at the same time. Except I said, “Shite! Are you alright?”

  She scampers off to get the nurse. The nurse is worried, saying I look like I’ve seen a ghost. Well, I did wake up looking at Mrs MacDonald.

  Mrs MacDonald settles back in her seat and pats herself down like she’s covered in dust. She twitters away while the nurse checks me over.

  “So what happened to you, young man?” she asks, ta
king out some needles and a half-knitted jumper. Oh, no, she’s prepared to be here for the long haul. I’m trapped.

  “Dunno,” I say, which is sort of true. I vaguely remember Skeates stabbing me with a compass in physics class. I’m still surprised he was in physics at all, so I’m not sure whether to believe my own recollection. My leg feels lumpy where he must have poked me, so I guess that part is true, which makes me worry that the other bits I’m beginning to remember might be real as well. Did I really jump him? Mrs MacDonald doesn’t press me, she’s too busy talking.

  “I heard you had an argument. Some boy at school. It sounds like it was his fault. Emma told me he was needling you.”

  “You can say that again.” I rub my leg.

  “You get one at every school who thinks he’s better than the others. When I was at school there was this lass…” Off she goes and I switch off for a while, trying to remember the turn of events that put me in hospital. I hear Mrs MacDonald mention Emma’s name again and my ears prick up.

  “She’s a nice girl, Emma, isn’t she? The other boy is in hospital too, so Emma did well to stick up for you.”

  “What? Skeates? In hospital?”

  “I don’t know his name.”

  “Emma stood up for me?” I grin.

  “Not that it helped much. The police didn’t pay any attention.”

  “The police?” I shout.

  She turns to look at me, without breaking her knitting pace. “The school had to ring them, given the two of you are hospitalised. What happened anyway?”

  “Dunno,” I repeat. I start worrying about repercussions, too late as usual. The good thing about Mrs MacDonald and her ceaseless wall of noise is that she doesn’t stop to wait for detailed replies and seems to have accepted ‘dunno’ as a satisfactory answer. No way I would get away with that if my mum was here. Thinking of which…

  “Where’s Mum?”

  “Your mum has, Connor, I’m sorry, eh…”

  Something really and truly shocking is happening – Mrs MacDonald is struggling to get the words out, which is something I’ve never seen before. It is so astonishing that the first thing I think is that I can’t wait to tell Emo. Suddenly it dawns on me that there must be good reason for her verbal diarrhoea to constipate. I sit up sharply in bed, immediately feel lightheaded, and fall back down onto the pillow.

  The nurse sees this and helps me up. She pulls a metal support out from behind so that I can sit upright and then begins to take my pulse and blood pressure. While my arm is squeezed by the blood cuff Mrs MacDonald rediscovers her talent for talking.

  “She has… gone into hospital,” she says.

  “What, here?”

  “No, Inverness.”

  “Inverness! Why Inverness?” I raise my voice again and a few of the other patients look over. I ignore them.

  “She had a nervous breakdown, love, and, well, she’s being observed in hospital for the time being.”

  “Breakdown?” I shout this time. “Is she all right? What happened?” The others look over again and I shout something offensive at them. They turn away.

  “I don’t know the details…” she says.

  I start to interrupt but she perseveres. “…Connor, there’s more. I can’t look after you when you come out of hospital.”

  Great news, peace and quiet for me.

  “So you will likely go into care until your mum has recovered. I’m afraid you have to go to a hearing tomorrow.”

  “What? What for?”

  “With your mum away and what happened at school, the social workers need to make decisions about your future.”

  “My future? What’s going on?” My phone beeps, interrupting my panicked rant. It’s a text from Emo:

  “U put Skeates in hopsital!! Hahaha!”

  I begin to reply about being pissed off and worried, then I change it and type –

  “It’s the other way around.”

  I take a picture of the hospital ward, send it to her and add,

  “And I’m in care as from tomorrow.”

  “What?”

  I take a picture of Mrs MacDonald and copy it with the message:

  “It sure beats the alternative.”

  “Ha, ha, now you know what Paul Sheldon felt like!”

  Then, before I recall that Paul Sheldon is Stephen King’s character in Misery, a doctor arrives. She checks me over while chatting in that reassuring way they must learn at doctor school.

  “Hi Connor, I’m Dr Scott. You have been in the wars, haven’t you? Luckily you just have a few bruises, but we would like to keep you in overnight because of your, er, situation, to get the results of the scans. You had a little fit yesterday and you might have banged your head. We’ve also taken some more blood tests and sent them to oncology to see if there is any connection with your cancer medication.”

  “Naw, I have fits sometimes when I’m stressed.” I don’t read anything into her comments because I’ve been tested so often it feels like standard routine.

  She smiles. “I’ve advised that you are kept in care in case of complications, at least until your mum comes out of hospital. I’ve also prescribed some painkillers for your headaches, which will make you feel drowsy.”

  “Do you know how my mum is?” I ask her.

  She smiles at me. “Don’t worry, Connor, she’ll be fine.”

  “I want to see her,” I say.

  “We’ll see what we can do. For now, look after yourself.” She ducks out the door.

  I turn back to Mrs MacDonald, who is still knitting. “So how does this care thing work?”

  Mrs MacDonald shakes her head. “I think they appoint someone to look after you, represent you – like a lawyer. I’m sure they’ll explain it all tomorrow, love.”

  I sigh, almost too tired to care. The painkillers must have kicked in, and I fall asleep.

  ***

  The next day I’m in an interview room with my panel-appointed lawyer, who introduced himself as Eddie Blair, on the second floor of a drab government office building that houses the Children’s Panel. Apparently, the panel make ‘safe and objective’ decisions about the future for children like me. Children like me? Violent losers with missing-in-action parents? Mrs MacDonald is working, so thankfully I’m on my own. However, I’m sceptical: I don’t really trust government systems, given that government systems locked up my dad. So I act surly and hard for this reason, but also to hide my nerves and to not come over as a soft touch.

  “It’s Connor, is that right?” asks Blair.

  I don’t reply. Four reasons why I don’t:

  1) I am bricking it.

  2) I can’t be bothered.

  3) He knows my name – it’s written on his file.

  4) The guy is a tube.

  He’s still looking at me for a reply, so I nod. I don’t want him thinking I’m simple. He hands me a form entitled ‘All About Me’, which I ignore at first, then change my mind.

  He looks chuffed ’cause he thinks I’m co-operating. I turn the form over and draw a picture of him.

  Blair’s balding but looks young. I wonder if he has the requisite skills.

  I finish the drawing, turn it over and read the questions. There are six of them, all along the lines of: ‘Is there something worrying you?’ and ‘What would you like to happen in the future?’ I immediately see that one reply fits all, so I complete every question with: Let my da out of prison before I die!!!!

  I hand the form to Blair. He looks at it but mustn’t have taken anything in as he just dumps it with the other papers without even asking about my answers. Typical, no one gives a shit about my view on things. He carries on his chat without so much as a tiny pause.

  “OK Connor, I’ll repeat what I’ve told you just in case you missed something.”

  I nod again. His wispy voice grates. I feel uncomfortable in the clothes they picked up for me: jeans, fine, but my dad’s faded Proclaimers t-shirt is too big for me and not really appropriate for a hearing lik
e this. It’s white, adorned with a printed picture of Craig and Charlie Reid. It’s one of the only things I have left of Dad’s. I keep it in my top drawer and sometimes sleep in it. I guess the polis or the social workers or Mrs MacDonald didn’t know that when they got my stuff from the house. The t-shirt and my stubbly hair won’t make a great impression, but at least I have my favourite black jacket under my arm.

  “We’re going to appear before a group of people who will make a decision about your future, Connor. They’ll be told all the facts and you can tell them what you would prefer to happen. You must bear in mind that whatever you say about your future or the circumstances leading to the eh, erm, incident in school, they will make a custody order for you to attend Dachaigh House.”

  I’m aware of Dachaigh House, a youth institution that took over when the old borstal – once famous for harbouring headcases – closed. My face, no doubt, displays concern anyway because the new place does exactly the same job, it’s just got a friendlier name. I worry about its semi-secure setup, guards and violent teens behind the fence. Maybe I’m being paranoid – it’s a friendly enough looking building but my mind has already painted a picture of Alcatraz. Considering I was at home eating pizza a couple of days ago, this is all a bit shock-horror.

  Blair continues, “There are two reasons for that. First, they need to keep an eye on you after what happened—” I butt in to his chat to say that I only fitted because Skeates stabbed me with a compass, but he interrupts me right back. “I know there are mitigating circumstances, Connor.”

  “Medical, you mean?” I say. “Self-defence?”

  “Yes, yes, those factors will be taken into consideration. However, there are other reasons that will have a bigger impact on the panel’s point of view. Your father is in prison, your mother in hospital, and you are unwell. The doctors have advised that you be kept in care so that someone can keep an eye on you. There is nowhere else for you to go.”