It's About Love

by Steven Camden

  “You need anything?”

  Zia’s standing at the bottom of my bed next to Tommy. They look like they’re auditioning for a cop buddy movie.

  “I’m good,” I say.

  “No.” Tommy moves round and sits down. “You’re a mess.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  They look at each other.

  “What is it?”

  They look at me.

  “They got him, Luke,” says Tommy. “They got Craig Miller.”

  And the name goes through me.

  “Who got him?”

  I see Dad and Marc in the car, not speaking as they drive, looking for Craig. What did they do?

  “The police,” says Tommy. And I breathe out.

  “They found the car all smashed up and someone tipped ’em off. He’s going down.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You kidding? You know how many people are willing to say they saw what happened?” Tommy smiles.

  INT. – NIGHT

  A pub full of weathered faces turn to look at camera.

  “I saw,” says Tommy. “It was mental. Proper Die Hard.”

  He rugby tackles Zia in slow motion. “Rammed him, you did. Just in time. Maaaaaaaaaaaaarc!”

  Zia stumbles under Tommy’s weight and the pair of them fall down, hitting the wall.

  “Get off me, man,” says Zia, getting up.

  “Sorry.” Tommy stands up and dusts himself off. “I’m just saying. It was sick. You’re a hero, Lukey.”

  “Shut up,” I say.

  “He’s serious,” Zia says, moving to the chair. “It’s true. You saved Marc. You properly saved his life.”

  He’s smiling. Tommy’s smiling. “You did it, Lukey.”

  What is this feeling? I don’t know it.

  Leia.

  I turn my head to the side. “My phone. It’s dead. You got a charger?”

  Zia frowns. “Forget about your phone, you idiot. Get better.”

  “I’ve got one in the car,” says Tommy. “Shall I get it?”

  I nod. “Please.” Then I turn to Zia. “Can you get Leia’s number from Michelle?”

  A dark rucksack upzips. A notebook slipped inside.

  There’s seventeen missed calls from Mum. Five from Dad.

  No new text messages.

  Nothing from Leia.

  Has she read the script? My story? I don’t know.

  I stare at the cracked screen. Broken, but still here.

  And my thumb is my pen.

  I don’t know if you got it, but I did it for you. For us. I’m not what you saw. I’m more than my past.

  Send.

  A girl rides the department store escalator. Lost in thought. A phone beeps.

  No reply.

  My phone is on my chest as I try to stay awake.

  A nurse brings me dinner. The room darkens. I hear a baby giggling.

  The nurse takes the full plate away. I try to stay awake.

  Why won’t she reply?

  Eyes closing. Fighting it.

  Then black.

  I feel her.

  Like the memory of a dream. An echo of what I could of had.

  I open my eyes and the chair is empty.

  Of course it is.

  We live our choices.

  YOUNG MAN sleeps. Wounded. His leg in traction. His face bruised. His fingers wrapped tightly around his phone.

  I open my eyes and see her.

  In the chair.

  I see her.

  Hair back in that same bun. Her lips. Her eyes. Perfect.

  The girl I lost. I could cry.

  Deep breath as I close my eyes.

  I hold them shut, then open them to pop the dream.

  She’s still there.

  “Leia.”

  My voice is croaky.

  Her hair is back in a bun. Her sweater’s navy blue. She’s still there.

  “You came.”

  She tries to smile, then pulls her feet up on to the chair, bringing her knees to her chest. Like she’s hiding from what’s happened to me.

  I go to sit up, but the pain shoots up my spine and I drop back on to my pillow.

  “Careful!” She stands up. I watch her eyes take me in.

  “Look at you,” she says.

  And there’s something in her face that I haven’t seen. She’s trying not to cry.

  I hold out my hand. “I’m sorry.”

  She takes a hesitant step toward me, then shakes her head. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  My hand is still out. Please take my hand. Please take my hand.

  She looks down, “You’re not supposed to die.”

  “I’m alive,” I say, smiling up at her, “And you’re here.”

  Then she’s leaning down, coming to me, her hand brushing mine as it moves to my face. Her touch on my skin closes my eyes and she kisses me. Her lips soft and slow, a flutter in her breath and I can feel her tears on my cheek.

  Stay with me, Leia. Let me show you more.

  She stands up and wipes her eyes with her sleeve. “How dramatic is this?”

  And we both smile, as sunlight fights through the blinds.

  “I sent you a message,” I say, holding up my phone.

  Leia’s eyes widen, then she moves back to the chair, reaches down into her bag and pulls out the envelope.

  “You really did.”

  She sits down and I feel every single muscle in me wake up.

  She slides out the script. “You’ve been busy, Skywalker.”

  “You’re really here,” I say, and now I’m welling up. But I don’t care.

  This is real.

  Her fingers stroke the title of my story.

  I watch her read the words, “It’s About Love.”

  Hearing her say it out loud feels like she’s inside my head. Like she knows what I mean.

  “You were right,” I say. “Underneath everything else. The ugly. And the stupid. Under the bad choices … That’s what it’s about. All of it. Even the people who mess everything up. They’re blunt and coarse and stupid and wrong, but what they do comes from love. Marc. My dad. Me.”

  That’s what I mean. I said what I mean.

  Leia nods. “I know.”

  And I don’t need anything else.

  She leans forward, reaching out for my hand. Her slender fingers around mine, and it’s like something bonds. Something solid. The kind of thing we’ll never have to explain. The kind of thing that makes you want to be brilliant.

  “So what’d you think?” I say.

  Leia exaggerates a pout. “Yeah. Pretty good,” her head tilts, “for a first draft.”

  She leans back and picks up her notebook.

  “Pretty good?”

  She smiles. “I think we could do better, I mean, if you’re up to it?”

  I smile. She takes out her pen.

  We are makers.

  “We should start where it matters,” I say.

  We are the builders of ideas.

  She’s looking at me. The fire in her eyes.

  “I guess we start with right now then.”

  Again, massive thanks to Nick, Sam, Hannah

  and everyone at HarperCollins Children’s Books.

  The more I learn, the happier I am to be with you.

  Mary, our chats mean a lot.

  Lily, your work helped so much.

  Thank you, Cathryn and Siobhan,

  for making things feel easy.

  Thank you, Lenny, Andrew, Nathan, Chrissy,

  Tuffy, Jenny, Marcello, Sandro, David,

  Aaron, Simon, Janet, Donna, Sian, Michael

  and Richard, for too many jokes and golden moments.

  It’s About Love was inspired by where I’m from

  and what I was shown.

  Thank you, Glen, Mr Hogan and Nan – the only

  role models I’ve ever needed.

  Thank you, Yael, Sol and Dylan – my best friends.

  And, finally, when I wa
s seventeen, a boy from the year above said something in a classroom that I doubt he’ll even remember saying, but it genuinely changed the way I looked at the world. Wherever you are, Paul Evans, thank you.

  Hello? Is it on?

  I’m just going to say it …

  2013

  Things happen for a reason. That’s what Ameliah tells herself. The universe has a plan. Right? Why else would it take her parents? Then she finds an old tape, with a boy’s voice on it – a voice that seems to be speaking to her.

  1993

  Ryan is lost. Mum gone, new stepmum, evil stepbrother. Why would this happen? He records a diary on a tape, for his mum, about a girl he just met, who he can’t get out of his head.

  Ameliah and Ryan are linked by more than just a tape.

  This is their story.

  Read an extract from TAPE …

  Hello? Is it on? Yeah, I can see the light. It’s on. I’m starting again. I’m recording.

  That just happened. That actually just happened and the crazy thing is it didn’t even feel weird. I think I get it now, Dad. I think I understand.

  It’s probably best not to think about it too much, right?

  The universe and everything.

  I’m here. That’s what matters. I’m here doing this and it happened. Just like you said, so I guess the universe is happy.

  Was it always meant to be now? Sorry, I’ll leave it alone.

  Everything happens when it should.

  This is what you did, sitting down and pressing record, and now it’s gonna be what I do.

  I’m talking into the speaker — how does that even work?

  Everybody always said, ‘It’s important to get stuff out, Ameliah, put it down, it’s part of moving on.’ I never really listened.

  I guess I just didn’t want to do it their way. Maybe I wasn’t ready, I dunno.

  This feels different. This feels right.

  So much has happened. There’s so much to say, so I’m gonna say it.

  It’s half twelve now and I’m recording my voice on to this tape.

  Just like you.

  Ryan wiped the condensation from the small circular bathroom mirror with his fingers and imagined he was scraping ice from the window of a dug-up frozen submarine. A World War II sub discovered near the North Pole years after it was lost at sea. He pictured seeing the solid face of some old naval officer, frost in his moustache, eyes wide, staring out, frozen in the panic of realising he was about to be stuck forever.

  He lowered his hand and saw only his own face, thirteen years old, flushed from the heat of the bath, his thick dark hair slicked back from getting out of the water.

  Whenever Ryan looked into the mirror he felt an urge to slap himself in the face. Not because he was angry with himself and thought he deserved it, more because he’d seen it in a film once. The private investigator character staring at himself in the mirror after a crazy night of action and danger and slapping himself to make sure he was focused for a new day on the job.

  Ryan lifted his hand level with the side of his face. He tensed the muscles in his arm, pulling his hand back ready to strike. His eyes narrowed as he prepared for the slap. Then he froze, staring at himself.

  — Come on, you chicken, do it. Do it!

  He let out a sigh, puffing out his cheeks as his arm moved back down to his side, and thought about how much space there was inside his mouth. How you could probably fit half a good-sized orange in each side between the teeth and your cheek.

  — Yo!

  The voice from outside the door came with a bang that shook the hinges and popped the air out of Ryan’s face.

  — I said yo! You better hurry up, weed, or I’ll fold you in half.

  Ryan stared at himself as the banging carried on.

  He pictured Nathan’s face on the other side of the door, getting more and more angry, twisting into shapes like some kind of mutant monster stepbrother. He reached for another towel and threw it over his head and shoulders like a boxer, getting himself ready for the title fight.

  It was just over six months since Dad sat him down and told him that Sophia would be moving in and bringing Nathan too. Dad had asked him what he thought and he’d said it was a good idea because he’d seen the hope in Dad’s eyes. They moved in the next week, which made Ryan realise it really didn’t matter what he thought.

  At least he didn’t have to share his room. Dad’s gesture to turn his office into a bedroom for Nathan meant Ryan at least got to keep his own space, although Nathan didn’t seem all that clued up about the rules of privacy. He never knocked. He just barged in like he owned the place.

  He was four months younger and yet a couple of inches taller and, truth be told, a lot stronger, although Ryan put that down to the fact that he seemed to eat non-stop. He even slept with a sandwich next to his pillow.

  A month later Dad and Sophia got married in a small grey room in the council building. Ryan wore the same suit he’d worn to his mum’s funeral. Back then it had been baggy; this time it fitted like a glove.

  The night of the wedding Sophia had cornered him in the kitchen, when Ryan was trying to find more cherryade, and told him that she wasn’t trying to replace his mum. That she loved his dad very much and wanted this to be a new start for everyone. Ryan had seen the look on her round face as she stood there awkwardly in too much make-up, her dark hair tied up, wearing her peach dress with frilly edges. Ryan had smiled and said that’s what he wanted as well and Sophia had hugged him slightly too tight and the pop bottle had fallen out of his hand.

  When she went back to the living room, Ryan picked up the bottle and watched the bubbles inside fight to get to the top. Nathan came into the kitchen to get more food. He told Ryan his suit looked stupid. Ryan said nothing. Nathan saw the bottle of pop and snatched it. Ryan went to say something then stopped himself, stepped back and watched Nathan twist the bottle lid and soak himself in cherryade.

  Ryan pulled on his Chicago Bears sleeping T-shirt and stared at his boom box. The shiny silver panels caught the light. The clean black buttons underneath the little windows that let you see the tape inside. The super bass circular speakers. Perfect. It had been his gift the Christmas before Mum died. He remembered tearing open the paper and seeing the corner of the box, spending the rest of the day in his pyjamas tuning the radio dial to all the different stations he could find.

  Ryan pulled open the narrow drawer of his bedside table and took out a cassette box. Its white sleeve was empty of any writing. He ran his thumb along the edge of the box, feeling the plastic edge, then eased the box open and took out the tape.

  He looked at the thin white label as he slotted the tape into cassette deck two. In block capital dark blue felt tip, the word MUM.

  Ryan pressed rewind and wiped the little window with his fingertip as the tape motor hummed, spooling the tape back to the beginning.

  The rewind button clicked up. Ryan moved the boom box to the edge of his bedside table so he could speak into it while lying in bed and, with two fingers, pressed the play and record buttons at the same time. The little red indicator light blinked on as the tape spooled round showing it was recording. Ryan cleared his throat.

  Ameliah stares at what’s left of her cornflakes. Her spoon makes waves in her bowl as her slender fingers turn it and she imagines each soggy flake is a tiny wooden raft floating in a milky white sea.

  She moves her spoon in between them and watches as some sink, while others fight to stay afloat. Morning light cuts across the kitchen floor through the big window.

  — Penny for ’em, Nan says from across the small square table through a mouthful of crumpet.

  Ameliah knows what that means, she’s heard it plenty of times before (mostly from Nan), but only this time does it occur to her that one penny for what someone is thinking seems like a really cheap deal.

  — I’ve never been in a boat.

  Nan stops chewing for a second to listen then carries on. Ameliah looks at her.

>   — I mean in proper water, like the sea.

  Nan starts to spread butter on to another crumpet from the pile on the plate between them.

  — You’re still young, love. There’s plenty of time.

  She smiles as she pushes the new crumpet into her mouth.

  — How old were you? asks Ameliah. When you went on your first boat?

  — Me? Oh, now you’re asking. It was probably with your granddad, long before you were born. Before I had your mum.

  Ameliah looks down. A strand of dark curls falls across her face. She sweeps it back behind her ear with her fingertips.

  — Are you sure you don’t want a crumpet, love, strength for your last day?

  Ameliah shakes her head.

  — No thanks, Nan.

  Nan takes another crumpet from the pile.

  — She wasn’t a breakfast person either.

  Ameliah looks at Nan and tries to imagine her younger, sitting across a table from Mum, a pile of crumpets between them, Mum daydreaming about school.

  — I guess it’s genes, continues Nan, although she certainly didn’t get it from me.

  Ameliah shrugs. Nan leans forward.

  — Are you keeping up with your journal, like the lady said?

  Ameliah pictures the empty journal pushed under her bed, the light brown recycled cover, the pages clean and new. She looks into her bowl. All but one of the tiny rafts have sunk. She stares at it, clinging on to the surface.

  — Kind of. It feels weird.

  — It will do, love, for a while, but trust me, it’s—

  — Important to get stuff out.

  Nan smiles and lets out an old-lady laugh through a mouthful of crumpet.

  — That’s my girl.

  Ameliah stares at the last flake clinging on to the surface of her milk as it bobs alone, refusing to sink.

  Ryan stared out of the classroom window across the school playing fields. The grey sky heavy with rain ready to fall. He saw a group of girls jogging in a loose pack, doing laps of the pitch, too far away to see faces. He focused on one girl, near the back, her dark hair bouncing against her shoulders as she moved.

  — Ryan!

  Miss Zaidel was standing in front of his desk. Everyone else in the class was watching.

  — Do you have any thoughts?

  Her voice was angry. Ryan looked across the room and saw Nathan smiling his smug smile.

  — Sorry, Miss, I was—

  — You were miles away, Ryan. Again. That’s what.