The Otherlife

by Julia Gray

  I got there a bit after the others, and when I arrived Frodo was doing this obscene dance and yelling, ‘EPIC FAIL!’ and I knew I was playing Jack so it didn’t occur to me that he was doing it for my benefit, but then I went a bit closer and sort of scanned the cast list all the way down and up and down again and I realised.

  Jack was being played by Frodo, who was still gyrating around and trying to knock me over with his huge hips.

  My name wasn’t there.

  Not even as the pig’s head.

  Nothing.

  So I went to the Staff Room and banged on the door and then asked really politely if I could please speak to Miss Atkins, please, thank you, sorry to disturb you on your tedious lunch hour where you all just sit around eating ginger nuts.

  And Miss Atkins came to the door and I said, ‘I’m really sorry about defacing the cover of my book, miss.’

  And she said, ‘That’s all right, Hobie. I accept your apology.’

  I said, ‘I should have been more respectful of school property.’

  And she smiled and said, ‘I’m sure you won’t do it again. It’s a shame you won’t be playing Jack, by the way. But your mother rang and said that you were working so hard at the moment that you wouldn’t be available for rehearsals.’

  The door of the Staff Room shut and I just stood there, staring into it, thinking that I’d never really noticed what wood grain looks like before.

  Monday 6th October

  My mother is a cow.

  When I came home on Friday she was on her cross-trainer in the small room by the playroom that my parents use as a gym. She was wearing a tracksuit from Sweaty Betty and Masai Barefoot Technology trainers and had no make-up on so you could see how much older she is than she looks most of the time. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail and her roots were showing up the outrageous fakery of her blondeness.

  ‘Why don’t you just have brown hair, Mum?’ I said, dumping my bag on the floor and picking up a kettlebell.

  She took one hand off the wheeling arms of the cross-trainer and muted the flatscreen TV.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said, how was your day today?’

  ‘Oh, it was all right,’ she said. ‘I had lunch with the Gala Committee and we had a lot of things to decide about the flowers and so on. I’m just working off a few calories because we’re going out for dinner this evening.’

  ‘When is your gala? Can I come?’

  ‘It’s during half term, and no, Hobes, I don’t think so.’

  My mum is patron of some massive children’s charity. Sometimes they organise parties. Sometimes there are leftover goodie bags with sweets in them.

  I sat down on the kettlebell like it was a miniature spacehopper, considering how to get Mum to change her mind about the play. If I’d just yelled at her straight out she would’ve got all defensive and might have taken away my Xbox privileges for a couple of days. I decided to do that deep-breathingy weirdly calm voice that I imagine they use in her stupid Pilates classes or reiki healing or feng shui or some other ritual that my mum’s a sucker for.

  ‘Mum, can we talk?’

  At once she dismounted from the cross-trainer and passed a completely unnecessary towel over her forehead. She sat down on the treadmill so our eyes were level.

  ‘Of course we can. What’s wrong?’

  ‘Well, Mum, I’m a bit—’ I searched for some kind of magic word – ‘I feel a bit belittled about … that I can’t be in the play any more … because you know I was going to play Jack and that’s one of the lead roles and—’ inspiration dawning – ‘I’ve been told that senior schools are, like, really impressed with acting achievements and things and I don’t want to … to jeopardise my chances of …’

  It was time for the Hug. She zoomed in, both arms in their baby-blue velour reaching tight around my back while a cloud of figgy perfume engulfed me. There was no choice but to give in to it so I allowed myself to bend a bit, like chocolate left out in the sun or something.

  ‘Oh, Hobie,’ she said into my hair. ‘It’s so sweet that you’re worried, but you needn’t be. They’ll award the Scholarships to the most academic students. It doesn’t matter about drama. I promise. Besides, I do think that with all the extra hours we need with Jason, you just wouldn’t have time for that kind of commitment.’

  ‘I could have made time!’

  ‘Well, you did fail that test last week. And Mr White said—’

  ‘I’ll work harder. I really will. I just really, really want to be in the play.’

  She sighed, checked her watch, and got up. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll email Miss Atkins. Maybe you can have a small non-speaking part. But you’ll have to promise to—’

  She just. Doesn’t. Get it.

  ‘No, Mum!’ In my distress I had forgotten about the Zenlike monotone. But it was an emergency. ‘No, Mum! I want to play Jack. That was my part.’

  ‘Hobie, they can’t possibly take it away from whoever they’ve given it to now. And anyway, it’s far too large a role. I really feel quite sure about this.’

  ‘But they’ve given it to Frodo!’ I howled at her departing tracksuit. ‘And he’s too fat to play Jack!’

  At the doorway she turned. ‘That isn’t a nice thing to say about your friend. And he was simply amazing in Oklahoma. A really beautiful singing voice.’

  Yes, because Jack is totally going to burst into song every time he spears a wild pig, now, isn’t he? Jesus.

  I was too furious to go on my computer or PSP or Xbox, which is what I usually do each night. I ended up staying in the gym with most of the lights off, reading a book Ben lent me called Gods of Northern Europe. I can’t begin to explain how frustrating it is that I can’t have a wolf tattoo until I know what it’s for and that means I have to read this book first. Or something.

  I don’t believe in God. I mean, I understand about Our Father Who Art in Heaven and so on, but that’s just something they make you say in Assembly in order to usefully bridge the gap between lost-property announcements and 8.58 a.m. I think Zara believes in God because she used to actually say her prayers each night, asking for people to be happy, even people she didn’t know, which is ridiculous, and sometimes if she loses something she asks God to find it and promises to be really good in return and not tell lies or eat too many cookies. As if God cares. I teased her about the prayers so much she stopped, but I suspect her of continuing in secret. When her hamster died she thought it was because God was angry because she’d done something wrong. That’s how stupid Zara is. If she passes even one of those exams she’s taking next year, I’ll be amazed.

  Anyway, this book is quite different re. Gods. For a start, in Norse mythology there are loads and loads of them, a bit like the Classical ones like Zeus and Athena and so on, but I was completely bored stiff of studying them, interfering in wars and running around disguised as old women and bickering like a bunch of morons on Big Brother. I mean, how many times do I have to draw a picture of Pandora opening the stupid box and then feeling really guilty about it? Those evils were just about the coolest thing that ever happened. She should have felt glad.

  These Gods were much, much more interesting. The main one was Odin, also called the Father of Battle, but I liked Thor best. He was Odin’s eldest son. I can’t believe that Ben can actually see them. Why can’t I? I bet my eyesight’s better. Then there was a bunch of others and some Goddesses who aren’t as important. Loki was the son of a giant and he was the mischief-maker, sort of unpredictable. I liked him too. And Loki was the father of Fenrir the wolf and also the World Serpent and the woman who ruled over the Land of Death whose name was Hel. (Awesome.) As you can see it’s all quite complicated. Ben must have studied this for ages. The Gods lived in a place called Asgard and feasted on an endless supply of pork and drank mead (like ale or beer or something) which they got from a goat. And right in the middle of Asgard was this massive sacred tree called Yggdrasil, or the World Tree. Yggdrasil was the tree of l
ife.

  Normally I dislike reading, but I read for quite a long time.

  Wednesday 8th October

  Today we had a fixture against St Martin’s and I was really, really up for a match. I felt different as I stepped off the coach, swinging my kit bag against Archie’s back. One of the good things about fixtures is that it’s normally just me and Archie from 8 Upper. Everyone else comes from the other classes or from Year 7. It’s quite refreshing after hours and hours with the Nicholson Twins and Hobbitboy all talking about the conditional-perfect tense in French or finding the volume of a cone.

  Ben didn’t sit with me on the coach, although he’d come as a spectator.

  ‘Good luck,’ he said, and shuffled off to sit on his own under a tree.

  Before matches I have this feeling in me, like an itch or a glow. Like I just need to get out there onto the pitch and go flying. I breathe in and I feel this unbelievable rush of oxygen, the red blood cells charging around in my veins. I raise myself up onto the toes of my trainers, wait for my muscles to come alive. Stretch my hamstrings against the ground. And I want to go out there … and nail it. And today I felt just like that, but like alcohol when you boil off lots of liquid and you’re left with this kind of distilled essence. I felt, honestly, like I might crush the skull of anyone that came near me.

  My position is outside centre. Sometimes I wish it wasn’t Rugby we were playing though. I wish it was fighting. I wish we had swords. We won the toss and as we shook hands with the opposition I saw three or four kids who were definitely not St Martin’s pupils on their team. They looked, like, a foot taller at least and seriously muscular, with jaws that jutted out aggressively over their mouth-guards.

  ‘Who are they?’ said Archie, pulling up his socks.

  Mr Voss said they were some French exchange students who were visiting from Toulouse.

  ‘Mr Voss, that’s so unfair!’ we all chorused.

  He said that as far as he knew there was no reason why they couldn’t participate, since they were temporarily pupils at St Martin’s.

  ‘What the hell,’ I said. ‘Let’s beat them anyway.’

  And we did.

  Towards the end of the second half it was 21–21 and we needed to score. So I just kind of went for it. I mean, what was there to lose?

  At one point I dived between both of their centres to get the ball and I felt invincible, even when they came running after me and one of them grabbed the back of my shirt and I felt it rip with this amazing scratchy sound that sounded like freedom and I set off up the pitch hugging the ball against my chest and I swear I have never run that fast in my life. And then someone tackled me from the side and I lost balance and fell and barrelled over and over in this frenzied somersault and the blood in my ears was going mental and the grass of the pitch had this really high earthy smell and I felt something give a bit in my arm and I didn’t give a shit and I rolled back onto my feet and kept on running. I realised my nose was bleeding because my mouth felt hot and wet and these overdressed mothers on the side were screaming for the ref to stop the match, but I was so close, so close to the try line. And I dived for it, just as two of the French kids landed on me from either side like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park when they try to take down the T. rex. I’d been travelling at such speed that even with the bulky foreign students weighing me down I managed to hurl the whole of my body over the line and the ball was all smeared with blood and my arm was tingling and when I stood up I couldn’t feel it any more.

  ‘Dude,’ said Archie, ‘that was epic.’

  And the whistle went.

  It turned out that I had sprained my wrist and dislocated my elbow and possibly broken my nose and I was covered from head to foot in the most spectacular bruises that looked like someone had done them with purple spray paint. The first-aid person from St Martin’s said I needed to go to hospital to check that nothing was broken, so they called my mother and she arrived in an Addison Lee almost immediately, smelling of white wine.

  ‘Oh, Hobie,’ she said, covering me with kisses.

  ‘He was definitely Man of the Match, Mrs Duvalle,’ said Mr Voss respectfully. He turned to me. ‘Good work, champ. Don’t go too crazy on a regular basis though. We’re going to need you for the inter-schools tournament at the end of term.’

  He patted my hair, which was a big mess of blood and turf.

  I eyed my mother. What if she was planning to add Rugby to the list of things I wasn’t allowed to do any more? But it turned out that she was actually thinking about whether I could get a Sports Scholarship to go with the academic one I was definitely in the running for. She made an I’ll call you gesture at Mr Voss, who was busy filling in about eighteen different Incident Report forms.

  The cab was waiting to take us to A&E. We got it to go via Marks & Spencer because I had missed tea.

  ‘I don’t think my arm is broken, you know,’ I said to Mum as she opened the box of Bakewell tarts, which I intended to finish before we arrived.

  ‘I should hope not,’ she said. ‘But at least it’s not your writing arm.’

  Friday 10th October

  Ben agreed to come round to my house again after school and I was really pleased. Jason was there for a short while to make up for the session we’d missed on Wednesday because I was in the hospital. Mum put us all in the playroom to whizz through our homework.

  ‘You don’t mind if Hobie’s friend joins in with the session?’ she said to Jason, as Clothilde carried in a tray of hot chocolate and Duchy Originals lemon biscuits.

  But Ben had already flung himself at Jason and was giving him a massive hug, and Jason was laughing and saying, ‘All right, little man?’ Which I thought was an absurd thing to say to a twelve-year-old. But I suppose Ben must have been pretty small when they first met. I was beginning to feel a bit left out, and when Zara sneaked in to see what all the fuss was about I shoved her back out the door and slammed it shut just short of her ponytail.

  We all sat around the playroom table and I got that weird feeling you get when you’re out at dinner and a really famous person walks past your table, and you realise there’s someone more important than you in the room. Sometimes Jason would murmur these little asides to Ben in a funny language, quite slowly, and Ben would nod and reply super-fast like he was completely fluent, and then at one point Jason said to Ben, ‘I see you’re still reading the Edders then,’ and Ben was all solemn and serious and pleased. It was like watching a totally different Ben.

  ‘What’re the Edders?’ I said, and Ben and Jason both corrected me simultaneously, saying they’re spelt E-D-D-A-S and represent these two massive old texts that tell the stories of the Norse Gods. Whatever. How was I meant to know?

  After Jason left and Mum and Dad had gone out for dinner we climbed up onto the roof. Ben accepted a cigarette and we sat and smoked in our coats, which we’d smuggled upstairs because it’s getting a bit colder now, and darker. It was harder to get up there with my arm in a sling, but I managed it.

  ‘What I thought was so magnificent about Wednesday,’ said Ben, ‘was how you just didn’t seem to feel any pain. When they all fell on you.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  I thought about it.

  ‘I felt kind of charged up. You know. Like when you give your dog loads of sugar and it goes mental and starts running around the house peeing on the curtains like Matteo’s did that time when we fed it Haribos and Lucozade. I felt like I didn’t have any nerves in my body for feeling pain. I mean, I sort of knew something had happened to my arm, but I swear, I really couldn’t feel it. I just wanted to get the ball over the line.’

  ‘Berserk,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s what you were. A Berserk.’

  We sat and smoked and the sun bled out into the sky and the aeroplanes cut across the clouds making their steady downwards glide into Heathrow and Ben told me about these warriors, called Berserks, that were sacred to Odin and were sup
posed to get special powers from him. They were phenomenal in battle, totally fearless, consumed with this mad rage that meant they feared no pain. They painted their bodies black and fought in the dead of night. They had no weapons and wore bearskins. Sometimes they believed they were wolves or bears. And that’s where the word berserk comes from. Awesome.

  ‘I think I’m starting to get it,’ I told Ben.

  The Otherlife. It’s a place that you think doesn’t exist, this far-off place with its icy mountain ranges and lawless warriors and wolves and savage Gods. And then you find it inside you. When I touched down and the blood from my face danced onto the rugby ball and the screams of the mothers and the other kids felt like they were actually inside my body, like it was my blood itself that was screaming, I knew. It was in me.

  That’s why the tattoo. It’s not because Ben wants to be a wolf. Or even a warrior. He just wants to know that the Otherlife is there.

  ‘So am I ready?’ I asked him.

  ‘Tell me the name of Odin’s father.’

  I thought frantically. ‘Baldr.’

  He snorted. ‘No.’

  ‘Buri!’

  ‘Wrong again. I thought you were reading the books.’

  ‘I am! But the names are so bloody complicated.’ If it’d been anyone else, I’d have kicked them, but I didn’t because it was Ben.

  ‘One more guess.’

  ‘Dammit, I know it begins with a B. Wait. BOR.’

  And Ben got out a square bottle of black ink with a round lid and gave it to me, and said I could find my own needle.

  BEN

  I don’t have many friends. Not at school, not anywhere. I hang out with Jake and Ally Stonehill, because they’re metal-heads, and metalheads stick together. But my best friend – by miles – is Solomon. Ever since we were paired together in chemistry in Year 9 and he put my hair out with Evian when I stood too close to the Bunsen burner. I can tell Solomon almost anything. I can ask him almost anything too, and if he doesn’t know the answer then he’ll try and find out later and ring me up at midnight to tell me he’s spent an hour on his father’s LexisNexis but he’s finally worked it out.