“That’s not the point! What happened? Why’d you flop it?”
“I didn’t flop anything.”
“So why then?”
“Luke, easy.” He reaches his hand out, I smack it off.
“Don’t touch me!”
“Calm yourself, mate.” His voice drops a tone.
“Answer the question!”
People are looking. Eyes on us. My arms are twitching.
Noah nods. “I think I’ll go now.”
And he starts to walk away. Yeah, walk away.
“What’s the point, Noah?” I shout after him. “If it all goes to shit anyway?”
He doesn’t look back, and I’m left, breathing through my nose, with an audience of pensioners.
Nan said: Nothing teaches like a mistake.
I step through the sliding glass doors feeling stupid.
The sun’s cutting through clouds and as I walk towards the supermarket car park. Rays hit my face like an idiot spotlight. Ladies and gentlemen, Luke Henry, the Bridge Burner!
The Fiat almost runs me over.
“Watch where you’re going, you knob!”
The driver door opens. It’s Noah.
“Get in.”
He points to the passenger side. I don’t move. Noah bangs the roof of the car. “I’m not playing, Luke. Let’s go.”
EXT. – DAY
Dull jagged letters scratched into wood. L + T.
He drives us to the woods.
Through the edge of trees I can see the grass sloping down to the brook and up the other side. We pull into the little car park and stop next to a Land Rover.
Noah turns the engine off.
“What’s going on?”
“Get out,” he says, stepping out himself.
I follow him around the wood-chip path, past the old white stone fountain that we used to drink from before it got turned off. The row of massive pine trees is still there. I get a flash of running down the slope, arms stretched out either side of me, pretending to be a kite. Noah’s walking with purpose towards the bushes and, looking over my shoulders, I can’t see a single other person.
This is well dodgy.
I stop walking. “Where we going?”
“We’re not there yet.” And he carries on.
I take another look round. Why is it so empty? Noah disappears between two trees. I could just leave. Walk home, right now. But I don’t. I step through the trees.
He’s sitting on the chocolate-coloured roots. Loose strands of the bark are frayed like horse hair. I stand just under the dark canopy.
“This is where we sat,” he says, patting the ground next to him. “I was here, she was on this side and we just sat, staring out between the trees, not speaking. Year Nine, we were.”
What’s he talking about?
But I do the calculation. “I was one and a half.”
For some reason I smile as I say it. Noah smiles too.
“Mad, right? I’m sitting under here getting my first kiss and you’re five minutes over that way chewing the remote control.” He points in the direction of our house.
“First kiss?” I say, taking a step closer to him.
He nods, grinning like he just tasted something amazing and I feel myself sitting down on the twigs and fallen leaves.
“Who was she?” I say.
I picture some kind of Super 8 footage of a boy and a girl standing in front of a tree, looking awkward, but happy.
“I haven’t been here for years,” he says, “but sitting here I can still see us.”
“We used to climb the trees back there.” I point. “Gave ’em names and everything.” And I get a flash of looking down through the branches at a ten-year-old Tommy. Him daring me to climb higher and carve our initials into the bark.
“Noah, listen, about just now …”
“Cut,” he says, standing up. “You’re giving too much weight to the wrong things, Luke. Come on. Your turn.” He’s looking down at me. I shrug.
“Fine,” he says, “I’ll go again.”
EXT. – DAY
A crushed can of Relentless drops in the wet bus-stop bin.
We pull up outside Sandhu’s.
Rusty metal mesh over the windows. Flaking maroon paint on the sign.
Noah turns off the engine.
“Right. So I’m on the wall there.” He points. “Matho’s next to me on my right, and Pete’s placing an empty can of Tennant’s Super three paces in front of us. Yeah?” He looks at me. I nod. “So, the bet is that he can’t climb up on to the wall, jump off and crush the can perfectly flat in one stomp. If he does, me and Matho owe him a quid each. If not, he owes us. Zoom in on the can.”
He makes a frame with his thumbs and index fingers.
“And?” I say.
“That’s it. Can you picture it?”
“Yeah, but did he do it? Did he win the bet?”
Noah smiles. “Broke his leg. Still walks funny now. We let him off the two quid.”
He starts the engine. I get the game.
“So?” he says.
I nod. “OK. I’ve got one.”
EXT. – DAY
Charred bubbles in burnt plastic. The remains of something burned on the fire.
The bus stop outside The Bear Tavern.
We park in the little side road and walk round.
“OK, so you’re Tommy.” I shepherd him on to the metal seat. “Zia’s next to you here, and I’m standing here near the kerb. We’re waiting for the bus.”
“Where are we going?”
“Nowhere. It’s nearly half four and we know that the Girls’ School bus’ll be coming soon. We just want them to see us.”
Noah’s smiling. “How old?”
“Thirteen.” I stare up the road. “So we see it coming and we’re all leaning, acting casual, but what we don’t see is the massive puddle.” I point down to the gutter. “Like proper deep. Bus pulls in, boom! Total wipeout, watched by a bus full of laughing girls.”
“Perfect!” says Noah.
“You mean painful.”
“That too.” He folds his arms like he’s actually waiting for a bus.
“So was that before or after the scar?”
And I freeze.
EXT. – DAY
Shadows of tall trees cut across grass towards the skate park. Car pulls up. Engine off. Quiet.
The ramp looks the same. Covered in tags and graffiti.
The sun’s going down and the cold moves through me.
“We didn’t even skate,” I say. “We just used to hang around here cos that’s what everyone did.”
I stare across the tarmac to the empty little kid’s playground and I can hear muffled shouts.
“I was this side, with Tommy. Zia was way over there talking to some girls. Then people are just running.”
Noah sits down on the edge of the ramp. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” I say. “Somebody said Craig Miller was here with his gang, but we couldn’t see anyone. There were too many people.”
“And did you run?”
“Not at first.”
I watch two BMXs roll down into the bowl of the tarmac and loop back up the other side like marbles.
“Tommy saw someone he knew, one of Craig’s lot. That’s when we ran. Up that way.” I can feel Noah watching me, and I’m imagining the camera circling round, taking in the park from every angle.
“We knew who he was. Everybody did. So we knew it was best not to stick around.” I scuff the floor with the sole of my shoe. “Maybe if we hadn’t’ve run.” Craig’s boney face. “If we hadn’t got split up. I dunno.”
Looking down at my hands. The blood.
We don’t speak. I’ve got no idea what Noah’s seeing in his mind, what he’s thinking, but I’ve never spoken about that day to anyone before.
Not like this.
“It didn’t hurt,” I say, looking at Noah. “But it should’ve.”
The streetlights flicker on past
the metal railings behind me.
“Then what happened?” says Noah.
“I went to hospital. Mum stitched me up.”
“Mum?”
I nod. “She’s a nurse. She wouldn’t let anyone else touch me.”
Noah’s eyes narrow. “That must’ve been tough.”
“Yeah. Then she phoned my brother.”
Marc’s eyes when he saw me, my sliced face. How he looked at Mum.
How she looked at him and how, even though I knew it would end badly, I felt the fire of pride in my gut as he took her keys and stormed out.
“I didn’t see it happen.”
Dark sky.
“But I’ve pictured it. I’ve pictured it a million times.”
Fading light.
“We all did,” Noah says and offers a smile.
He’s heard the story. Course he has. My hands go into my pockets and I look at him. “I loved your film.”
And I watch the words flow out of my mouth, snaking through the air towards him. Words I really mean. About the past and right now.
He opens his hands and we both watch them curl round into a snail-shell spiral across his palms. The story of my scar. Never told to anyone who wasn’t there. How I feel. Now in his care.
He closes his hands like a book and they disappear.
We pull up right behind Mum’s car. The front room light is on.
“Thanks,” Noah says. “That was good.”
“Yeah.”
I thread my fingers through the carrier bag handles between my legs.
“Ideas, Luke. There’s nothing like the buzz of a good one.”
I don’t look at him, but I know what he means. I’ve felt it. In class. On the bus. With Leia.
“I messed up,” I say, still staring into my lap.
Noah taps my elbow with his fist. “Yeah. You did.”
I turn to him.
Noah Clarke. Boy from Bearwood who wrote a film.
Then he points past me out of my window.
“Two streets that way. Richard Dwyer’s house.”
I look out.
“In Year Seven, he chased me round the whole school twice, then gave me a kicking in front of everyone.”
“Why?”
“God knows. He felt threatened, or he had stuff going on at home and was lashing out, or he was just a nasty piece of work. That and a thousand other shitty things. It doesn’t matter.” He mimes pouring from jugs with both hands.
“It all goes into the pot, Luke. Along with the first kisses and the broken bones and the packed bags and train journeys and the late night phone calls and funeral speeches. All of it. Stuff just happens. Nobody knows why. I didn’t know that I would come back home, but I did. Not because I failed, because I chose to. That’s what matters. That’s what happens in my story, and I’m fine with it. I get to play with ideas and help other people do the same every single day. Maybe one day I’ll write another film. Maybe I won’t. Who knows?
“I love what I do. I love where I’m from and that I found my thing. Not everybody does.” He balls his fists. “And that’s fine. It is what it is. But if you do find your thing, something that makes your blood crackle, you better damn well do it.”
He looks at me with sharp eyes. “You messed up, Luke, no denying it. But you’re a maker, not a destroyer. You’re a builder of ideas. I can see it.”
He points right at me and I don’t know what to say.
“Is film your thing?” he says, lifting his chin.
“I think so.”
“So make, then! Stop wallowing in what you think you’ve broken and make something instead! Build something with Leia, or do it on your own, but do it.”
“It’s not that easy,” I say.
“Who said anything about easy?” He sticks up two fingers. “Throwing that at the whole world is easy. Any idiot can do that. But making something that matters? Something that hits home? Only a handful of people can do that.”
I can feel the energy coming off him.
“You just make sure you tell your story and nobody else’s, yeah? Say what you want to say.”
He bangs his chest with his fist.
“You do that, Luke, and you might even find out who you are.”
Tommy tearing the plasterboard from a partition wall with his hands.
Zia in Selfridges surrounded by orange fake-tan faces, accidentally spraying aftershave in his own eyes.
Marc wiping his eyes with the back of his hand as he chops onions.
Donna looking at flats online.
Mum signing a patient’s cast with an ‘X’.
Dad waiting in the Argos queue, blocking an old lady’s view of the screen.
People talk about ‘the zone’.
Marc used to speak about it when he was still running in races. That place where you almost feel like you’re outside yourself. Like some higher power is passing through you and you’re watching your own body performing what you were born to do.
Tommy on the football pitch.
Marc on the track.
I dunno if this is the same thing, but I know I can’t stop.
I’m on my laptop. It feels right for this. Cutting and pasting.
Arranging lines in place.
If I’m not typing, I’m combing through my notebooks, finding bits. Scenes and thoughts. Memories and lines. Scribbling words. If I’m not doing that, I’m pacing my room, speaking ideas out loud, chunks of dialogue.
Or doing press-ups while picturing camera shots, trying to piece scenes and moments together.
Marc brings me bits of whatever food he’s experimenting with.
Tahini and falafel. Chorizo and couscous.
Sunday comes and goes.
Monday night I pass out on my laptop keyboard.
Tuesday morning I wake up with my legs literally under a blanket of paper. My eyes sting, but every bone in me has a charge. I can’t stop.
I won’t stop. Not until it’s finished.
I work all day. Donna comes over. Her and Marc invite me to watch a film with them. I tell them I don’t have time. I run a bath, then forget I did. Piece by piece I build up my story. I use Marc’s printer and make a physical pile, printed sheets mixed with notebook pages. Whole passages get crossed out, then rewritten. Typed-up, deleted, typed again.
My life is my scrapbook. Scribbled on. And full.
Balls of scrunched-up paper dot the room like graffitied snowballs.
I drink enough tea to fill a skip.
Noah said: Stuff just happens. Nobody knows why.
I can hear birds. It’s early, but I’ve been awake for over an hour. I’m holding my most recent notebook.
I read the line: life isn’t a film.
And I laugh out loud, sitting on my bedroom floor, a bombsite of ideas.
I’m Tom Hanks in Castaway. I’m Edward Scissorhands. I’m that other guy, from that film—
“Lukey?”
Mum opens my door and I watch her eyes take in what must look like carnage to her.
“You OK, love?”
She’s in her uniform. It’s Wednesday morning.
“I’m all right,” I say, and speaking the words feels like my brain slows down a little bit. “Just working on something.”
“That’s great, sweetheart. Can I open your window a bit?”
I nod. She tiptoes over notes and opens the window. The birdsong gets louder.
“You look tired, Luke.” She’s nodding the ‘nurse’ nod.
“I am tired, Mum. I’m knackered.”
She looks worried.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’ll be finished soon, then I’ll rest.”
Mum smiles. “You always were your own man.”
“Pardon?”
She waves her finger like a wand over the whole floor. “All this, you and your ideas. Something would just set you off, and whoosh!”
She’s picturing something from the past, something she’s never told me about before.
&nbs
p; “Never needed stroking,” she says. “Not like your brother, and God knows your dad did. Still does. You were always different. Always seemed like you were just gonna do what you wanted off your own back.”
I look up at her. It’s like I’m listening to her talk about someone else.
She sees my face and smiles. “Nobody pushed you and you found your way.” She tiptoes back to the door and stands on the landing. “You do your thing, Lukey. I’ll see you later.”
And she goes. I hear the front door open and close, then through my open window her steps to her car, the door opening and swinging shut, the engine as she pulls away. I grab my pen and the nearest notebook.
Black.
Hum of a strip light and radio static as a dial tries to find a station.
Fade up to a face.
Noah never mentioned endings.
“Start where it matters,” he said. “Start with a question.”
Does that mean you should end with an answer? What does that even mean?
INT. – DAY
A pile of papers like crumpled A4 leaves full of words, some typed, some handwritten.
I tidy my room.
I shower.
I feel like I just climbed a mountain. All ache and satisfaction.
It’s Thursday afternoon.
I did it.
Marc’s made pad thai from scratch. I’m eating my second bowl in front of the telly watching a man deciding which red, numbered box to open.
I think of Noah. I want to tell him what I did. Show him.
But first I have to get it to her.
I reach for my phone. Contacts. Tommy. New message.
Yo. I need your help. L
Send.
The game-show host asks the question, “Deal or no deal?”
I stare at my phone and wait.
EXT. – NIGHT
Nearly midnight. Dark windows. A silent front door.
I am a maker. I am a builder of ideas.
Tommy’s messing with the stereo as I get back into the car.
“Done?” he says.
“Done.”
“So what now?”
“Now I sleep.”
And we drive back towards town from the other side. The night-time road gets blurry in the distance.
“Thanks, man,” I say, fighting to keep my eyes open.
“No worries. Let’s hope she likes it.”
I picture Leia opening the door in the morning, looking down, reading her name.
“You excited about tomorrow? Big one seven, man.”
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