Shining On

by Lois Lowry

  Lois Lowry

  FOREWORD

  Meg Rosoff • Resigned

  Meg Cabot • Allie Finklestein's Rules for Boyfriends

  Melvin Burgess • Coming Home

  Anne Fine • Getting the Message

  Sue Limb • You're a Legend

  Jacqueline Wilson • The Bad Sister

  Celia Rees • Calling the Cats

  Malorie Blackman • Humming Through My Fingers

  Lois Lowry • A Summer to Die

  Rosie Rushton • Skin Deep

  Cathy Hopkins • John Lennon Said

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  “There's got to be somewhere I can be just me,” a teenage boy named Gregory shouts at his mother in Anne Fine's story “Getting the Message.”

  Looking for such a somewhere is a theme in all young people's lives as they mature and try to sort out who they are and where they fit in the world.

  When the low blows that are part of every life interfere and mess things up, it is even harder to find the somewhere. That's what the stories in this collection are about: fighting through to find one's place.

  It has always been tough to be young.

  It is especially tough to be young today.

  And each of these authors has added another element to that toughness. A physical handicap. A fractured family. A troubling past. A parent who stops being one. A memory that isn't true.

  There are always people—usually parents—who want to protect youngsters, to help them along, to make things easy. It was true for me as a kid; my parents wanted things to be easy and painless for me, and safe, and I fought against them to find my own way of being. Then I did the same thing to my own children, trying to shield them from the hard things. They fought back, of course, as I once had.

  These stories are about that, too: about the need young people feel to face their own conflicts; to knock down the protective barrier that their parents have placed around them; to pry open the hidden, undiscussed things and look head-on at what's really there to be battled.

  “You can find the roots just under the surface almost anywhere in our garden,” the narrator, Laurence, comments in Melvin Burgess's “Coming Home” as he watches his father dig in the yard of the home that is being de-stroyed by secrets. In “Getting the Message,” Gregory in-sists that his family face the thing they've been avoiding, the question of his sexuality.

  These are realistic, contemporary stories. Reading them, I was surprised to come across one that was different. A ghost story! Supernatural beings, rising from graves, taking on new forms. What on earth has Celia Rees's “Calling the Cats” to do with all these others? I asked myself. Then, rereading, thinking about it, I could see that the link had to do with the young protagonist, in this case a girl named Julia—called Jules—coming from a difficult, disconnected past, finding a way to lay her problems to rest at last. I read the story one final time and could see the grief in it, the loneliness, the well-intentioned mom and the girl with the secret knowledge, the solitary thing she had to do, in order to find her own somewhere.

  Not different at all. Just one author's new way of looking at the same hard issues.

  Happy endings? Some. Maybe. But youth is not a time when there are any endings, really. Just coming-to-terms-with. “Resigned” is a title with more than one meaning. Mom quits, in this story by Meg Rosoff. She resigns from the family. And does she rejoin it after they have all thought things over? No. “So this is where I'm supposed to say we all lived happily ever after, but in fact we didn't—at least, not quite in the way we expected to,” the young narrator says as the story approaches its conclusion.

  This family comes to terms with how things are. They become resigned, and somehow content as well.

  And maybe that is what today's young people are best at and may find in this collection: a new way of seeing things, a new way of being, of finding their place, a peek into the “somewhere I can be just me.” With that understanding, they can move forward; trudging, sometimes; battling, cer-tainly; but radiant, always, with the wonderful resilience that the young seem always to have. Shining on.

  —Lois Lowry

  Meg Rosoff

  My mother has resigned.

  Not from her job, but from being a mother. She said she'd had enough, more than enough. In actual fact, she used what my dad calls certain good old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon words that they're allowed to use and we're not. She said we could bring ourselves up from now on, she wanted no more part in it.

  She said what she did all day was the laundry, the cooking, the shopping, the cleaning, the making the beds, the clearing the table, the packing and unpacking the dishwasher, the dragging everyone to ballet and piano and cello and football and swimming, not to mention school, the shouting at everyone to get ready, the making sure every-one had the right kit for the right event, the making cakes for school cake sales, the helping with homework, the making the garden look nice, the feeding the fish we couldn't be bothered to feed, the walking the dog we'd begged to have and then ignored, the making packed lunches for school according to what we would and wouldn't eat (for those of us who have packed lunches) and then the unmaking them after school with all the things we didn't eat, the remembering dinner money (for those of us who didn't want packed lunches), and not to mention, she said, all the nagging in between.

  Here she paused, which was good because we all thought the strain of talking so fast without stopping was going to make her pass out. But quick as a flash she was off again. Dad stood grinning in the corner, by the way, like all this had nothing at all to do with him, but we knew it was just a matter of time before she remembered she was married and then the you-know-what was going to hit the you-know-who.

  Mum took a deep breath.

  And another thing.

  She had her fingers out for this one. And there weren't enough fingers in the room to list the next set of crimes.

  Who did we think took care of the bank accounts, the car insurance, the life insurance, the mortgage, the tax returns, the milk bill, the charity donations, the accountant …

  Here she paused again, looking around the kitchen to make absolutely certain she had our full attention and eye contact and no one was thinking of escape—even for a minute or two—from the full force of her resentment.

  We are not totally stupid, by the way. We read the tabloids often enough to know that between a mother giving a lecture of the fanatical nervous breakdown variety to her kids and Grievous Bodily Harm there is a very fine line indeed. The Sun, for instance, seems to specialize in stories along the lines of Formerly average mum bludgeons family with stern lecture and tire iron, then makes cup of tea. We three kids were doing the eye contact and respectful hangdog-look thing, maintaining that pathetic silence that makes mothers feel guilty eventually, when they're done shouting. But we had to give the old girl credit, this time she showed no sign of flagging.

  She took another deep breath.

  … the magazine subscriptions, the dentist appointments, the birthday parties, the Christmas dinner, the pres-ents, the nephews and nieces, the in-laws.

  As one, we swiveled to look at Dad. Mum had stopped and was looking at Dad too, whose brain you could tell was racing with possible escape routes, excuses, mitigating cir-cumstances, and of course the desire to be somewhere else entirely. He shot a single furtive glance at the back door, figured it was too far to risk making a break for it. (Mum is no slouch in the lunge-and-tackle stakes, having been a county champion lacrosse player on a team full of hairy dykes back a hundred years ago when she was in school. We knew she hadn't forgotten all the moves due to an incident a few years ago with an attempted purse-snatching. None of us refers to it now, but word on the street is that the guy still never leaves the house.)

  And, s
he said (glaring at me because the woman is an experienced enough mother to hear you thinking a digression about lacrosse), and I hope you are listening, because when I say I am not going to do it anymore, I mean I am not going to do it anymore. She glared at each one of us in turn— a kind of equal-opportunity glare.

  And one last thing, she said, in an even scarier, quieter voice, and I risked a sideways glance to see if Francis Ford Coppola was in the wings directing this masterful perfor-mance. From this moment on, she continued, I am deaf to whining. Deaf to any annoying tone of voice you three— she shot a relatively benign look at Dad just to let him know he was off the hook on this particular issue, assuming he backed her up, that is—can dream up. Screaming will only be acknowledged if accompanied by bones sticking out of skin or hatchet actually buried in skull.

  Moe was shuffling his feet a little now, and sneaking peeks at his watch because his teacher hated it when any-one was late to school.

  She glared at him and he jumped to attention like someone out of the Queen's Guard.

  Right, she said, surveying her troops and appearing a little calmer now. Any questions?

  Nobody dared say anything, except, of course, Alec, who could smarm for England and has not lived fifteen years on this earth without picking up a trick or two along the way. He had stopped lounging against the wall, which is what he does with most of his waking hours, stood up fairly straight, plastered this sickening look of sincerity across his wily mug and said, OK, Mum, fair cop, we're with you on this. I'm only surprised you didn't make a stand a long time ago.

  Then, just to prove she wasn't born yesterday either, Mum made this kind of snorting sound and rolled her eyes, indicating rejection of smarm, and said, I can't tell you how pleased I am that you approve, Alec. Now everyone better get a move on because school starts in twenty minutes and you are going to have to figure out how to get there.

  As one, we turned to Dad, who was now trying to make himself two-dimensional and slide behind the fridge, which would have been easier if he hadn't been six-foot-four and built like a rugby scrum half. But Dad is a man who knows when to fold in poker, like when all he's got in his hand are twos, threes, and fours of different colors. He folded gracefully.

  Come on then, he said in a resigned voice. Pile in. We'll leave Mum alone for now and give her some time to collect herself.

  Some time to collect myself? Mum said. Some time to collect myself? How kind, how fantastically kind of you. Why, I can't think how to show my appreciation short of taking out a full-page ad in the effing Financial Times. (She practically screamed that last bit.) But, say what you will. I now have the rest of my life to myself, and it's you suckers who are going to have to cope.

  She smiled at us then, a genuine smile, all warm and mumsy and loving, and kissed us each in turn, the way you'd kiss people who were trooping off to a firing squad.

  Have a lovely day, all of you. See you later.

  We hated it when she turned all nice and snatched the moral high ground out from under us. But it was getting late so we all crammed into Dad's car, elbowing and kicking and biting each other like captives in a government crocodile-breeding initiative, and headed off to be late to school.

  Naturally there was a fair bit of conversation in the car about Mum's little episode.

  She's bluffing, Alec said. She's probably just getting her period.

  I wouldn't be so sure, smart-arse, Dad said. She didn't look like she was bluffing to me. And just a tip for later life—don't ever even think those words in the vicinity of a woman or you'll find yourself castrated before you can say oops.

  Moe grinned and I sniggered, knowing our dear big brother's future was definitely going to be bollock-free.

  Anyway, we got to school late, and all of us got detention, except Moe, who has a professional way of looking like he's about to burst into tears. By lunchtime we'd all for-gotten that we even had a mum at home, what with all the gossip and sexual harassment and who's not talking to who and have you noticed who she's hanging around with these days to talk about.

  After school, Moe and I caught a ride home with Esther's mum, who wears flowery clothes and acts like a proper mum, asking if you're hungry and doling out crisps and having tissues with her at all times, and never screaming shut the bloody **** up! at her children like someone else I can think of. Not that I'd want her as my mum, due to her being an irony-free zone, not to mention harboring a fervent wish for Esther to grow up to be a Person of Substance, an expression she actually uses in public, which explains why Esther looks so long-suffering and wants to be a flight attendant.

  My mum always said she wanted me to be a ballerina, which is her idea of the world's funniest joke because I'm not exactly small and could be two ballerinas if they cut me in half and I had four legs. Moe wants to be a vet, like every other eight-year-old, and Alec just wants to get out of school, drink alcohol, go clubbing, get his driver's license, get a car, and have a girlfriend who'll let him have sex with her all the time, though not necessarily in that order.

  But I'm getting off the point here.

  We stayed at Esther's for supper, dutifully notifying Mum so she couldn't shout that she'd gone to all the trouble to make us a nice blah blah blah with three kinds of blah blah blah on the side and we weren't there to eat it and hadn't even had the courtesy to phone.

  She seemed pleased to hear that we weren't coming home for dinner, and it wasn't until I hung up that I realized she hadn't said the usual—if you're not home by seven, you're toast—but I took it as tacit and made sure Esther's mum gave us a ride home. We walked in the door at ten to seven, which I thought was a pretty good touch, just in case someone's watch might be running a few minutes fast.

  Mum was on the phone when we got there, talking to her business partner, Jo. They'd had a lot of interest from America after the article that was written about them in Country Life, and apparently antique garden implements were all the rage among rich Americans who had too much money and not enough antique garden implements.

  I noticed immediately that the breakfast table looked exactly the same as it had when we all left for school that morning, with dirty dishes and open jars of marmalade and crumbs everywhere, and I thought Mum was going a bit far to prove a point, given how much she hates mess of any kind, but I thought I'd better play along and so started clearing up. I shouted for Alec to come help, but he said he didn't give a monkey's whether it was cleared up or not, and since we were in charge we should be able to live in squalor if squalor was what we liked.

  As squalor went, this was pretty tame, and anyway I had homework to do and got distracted by Hooligan wanting to go out for a walk and since Mum wasn't giving orders any-more, I let him out in the garden and even he looked con-fused that no one was shouting at him to stay away from the herbaceous borders.

  Hey, Moe, I hissed. Get this. And I pointed to Hoo out in the garden doing a poo the size of Mont-Saint-Michel by Mum's Nicotiana sylvestris, and Moe's eyes widened and we both thought, cool!

  After that we forgot about Hoo and watched some tele-vision while pretending to do homework and in the com-mercial breaks I managed to write a whole essay entitled “The Egyptians: Why They Became Extinct.”

  After the initial shock, this new regime was turning out to be much more relaxing than life with Mussolini. Oops, did I say a fanatic Italian dictator? I meant Mum.

  When Dad finally got home he looked a little grumpy about no dinner being on the table, but it wasn't long till he got the hang of things and filled a soup bowl full of Frosties and sighed really loud a few times to make sure everyone knew he wasn't thrilled about the new order. Moe looked at Dad's Frosties and, because no one said no, he had some too.

  Over the next week or so, Mum moved into her office in the garden, which she'd had the foresight to make Dad build with its own shower room and enough of a kitchen to survive on. Also, as she put it, there was no way she was going to step foot in the kitchen until we four called pest control. She still came
to say good night to us, a little like a fond auntie, and sometimes we hung around and did our homework in her office because every place in the whole house seemed to have something messing up the surfaces where you might want to put a book. And she didn't seem to mind us coming in as long as we didn't bother her or leave wrappers on the floor. Which was tricky, given that all our meals seemed to come in wrappers these days. She was on the phone a lot, and having meetings with her partner and smiling more than we'd seen in ages.

  Which was great.

  Only, after a few weeks of this, us kids were starting to look at each other and think, hey, fun's fun, but there are no clean clothes in the whole house and we've run out of cereal for breakfast and tea, and speaking of tea, there's only one manky box of teabags that came free from Tesco about a hundred years ago and Dad's taken to drinking in-stant coffee, which puts him in an even worse mood than he is naturally. Also, the dog needs brushing, the radiators make a horrible noise, and every envelope that arrives has For Your Urgent Attention written on it in red.

  So we sat down that Saturday at what had once been the breakfast table but now looked like that exhibit at the zoo, filled with half-eaten meals and Rattus norvegicus proba-bly written on a brass plaque somewhere. I noticed the two goldfish in the bowl on top of the fridge for the first time in ages, and it was clear no one else had noticed them either, considering that they had given up swimming some time ago and taken up floating on the surface. Moe was wearing the cleanest of his shirts, which had ketchup spilled down the front and a chip actually stuck to it, Dad had gone out to have breakfast alone with the newspaper at Starbucks, and Alec and I were drinking blueberry cordial, which was the only thing left to drink in the house since we ran out of teabags and the milkman stopped coming.

  OK, guys, I said. I think it's time to start begging.

  Moe looked annoyed. But we're doing perfectly well without any help, he said, digging into a bowl of recently thawed peas from the freezer with some week-old takeaway curry mixed in.