by Polly Ho-Yen
At my school back home I’d never felt that I was behind everyone else. I thought that I would get better in time; that it would just take me a bit longer than the others. It hadn’t even bothered me much.
Now I knew that there was a huge gap between me and everyone else. I felt it as a problem that poked and prodded and needled me, and would not leave me alone. The thought of returning to school started to make me feel sick. A little burrow in my stomach flipped with nerves at what the next day might bring, at how I would cope when I was asked to do something I did not understand.
The only thing that distracted me was the matchbox. I wondered again who had left it there and why they had done so. I wondered whether I could make something happen with it, as I had done with the walnut and the wooden thing and the conker. I remembered the coin toss and the broken mobile phone and Dad appearing in the playground. I’d made those things happen – I was sure of it. By holding those things in my hand and thinking hard about what I wanted, I’d changed the way things were going to be.
It hadn’t worked every time, of course. I hadn’t been able to make myself invisible. I hadn’t made myself disappear in the classroom. For some reason the things didn’t always work, and something told me that I shouldn’t try and use them for something small, just to test them out. I understood – as clearly as I knew that singing in the morning would irritate Tiber – that I should only use the things when I truly needed them.
All through the evening I kept reaching into my pocket to enclose the matchbox within my palm, exploring its corners and edges, wondering, wondering what it might contain, and what I might be able to do with this new thing. It was as I was running my fingers over the matchbox that I heard a crash outside, in our small concrete square of a garden.
Mum was showering upstairs and Tiber was in our bedroom, supposedly doing homework. I walked slowly over to the back door and peered out through the glass. There was no one there, but a ball, grey with dirt and scuffed around the edges, rolled slowly across the concrete and then finally came to a stop just in front of me.
Then I heard yells and shouts from the Noisy Neighbours’ garden, and then a face, with two large brown eyes that seemed to glow and grow larger as I looked at them, appeared over the wall. Then an elbow, an arm, two legs and the rest of her body flew over the wall as though it had been thrown over, like she was a ball herself.
It was the girl I’d seen crossing the road the other day. The fearless one who had darted out to get the football and speeded away from the car, only just in time.
She landed lightly on the concrete with her knees bent, and looked around.
For one absurd moment I wanted to hide. I retreated and thought about ducking down behind the sofa so she couldn’t see me. But by then the girl had already spotted me. She pressed her face against the glass of the door, using her hands to shade her eyes, and when she saw me, she started to wave frantically, beckoning me over.
‘Hi,’ she said with a huge grin when I opened the door. She was tiny. She must have only reached my shoulders, but the way she stood made her seem about the same size or even taller. Her hair was very short and tufty, sticking up at angles; even brushing it wouldn’t make it any neater.
‘Hi,’ I said back shyly, unable to quite meet the gaze of her large brown eyes.
She pointed to her chest with her thumb, prodding herself roughly, almost punching herself, and said, ‘Betsy. I’m Betsy.’
‘Leelu,’ I said quietly.
‘Huh?’ she said. ‘What’s that?’
I tried again. A little louder this time. ‘Leelu – I’m Leelu.’
‘Ah – hi, Leelu.’ She reached out her hand to shake mine, something no one I’d met had ever done before. We shook hands vigorously. ‘I’m sorry, I apologize. We kick our ball over and I come to get.’ She shrugged her shoulders over at the ball.
‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘We don’t mind. We don’t use the garden much.’
‘You just move here?’ Betsy asked.
‘Yes, not long ago. Although it feels like we’ve been here ages already.’
‘It’s like that when you move. Everything new. Everything to get used to. It speed time up. Makes you tired.’
‘Yes,’ I said. That was exactly how it was.
‘I go now,’ Betsy said. She did something with her feet that made the ball spring up into the air. She caught it neatly and tucked it under her arm. She turned to leave, but then stopped and turned back to me. ‘You play?’ she asked, gesturing to the ball.
I shook my head.
‘I teach you,’ Betsy said, and then she threw the ball high over the wall and there was a cheer and a scrabbling sound. And then Betsy herself scaled the side wall, vaulted over into her garden and was gone.
And in the empty yard, for the first time that day, I felt myself smile.
14
It was only much later, when Mum had kissed me goodnight and left for work, when Tiber was in the bathroom having a shower, that I dared to open the matchbox.
The cardboard was very old and worn, but I could still make out the faded picture of a ship on the front. It was sailing across ornate blue curls for waves. I slid the drawer out.
Inside there was a clump of something yellowy green; some sort of plant that reminded me of a sponge, the way it clung together. It had a dried-out feel but was still soft to touch, like the fur of a cat or the doughy rug that we kept in the bathroom.
I handled it for a while, passing it from one hand to the other, enjoying its lightness. When I heard the shower being turned off, I quickly scooped it back into the matchbox and hid it beneath the floorboard alongside the other things I had collected.
It left fragments of green and brown on my palms, which I flicked onto the carpet so there was not a trace left. I buried my hands beneath my duvet as I settled into bed.
When Tiber came back in, I felt my secret as though it was something burning. To me it was fierce, blazing, almost uncontrollable. I was sure that if Tiber saw me, he would know just by looking at my face that I had something to hide. I concentrated on staying quite still so he would think I was asleep, but my mind was whirring furiously, turning everything over. I wondered how sure I really was that the things gave me powers or whether I had just imagined they did.
I heard Tiber take a few steps towards me, and concentrated on keeping my breathing even and deep. It seemed like a long time before I heard him walk away. Then I heard him slowly opening the wardrobe door, delicately pulling out drawers. I sensed that he was trying not to make any noise, that he was trying not to wake me, which struck me as odd because Tiber usually enjoyed doing things like that.
After that the bedroom door closed. I heard his muffled footsteps creeping slowly down the stairs. And then the unmistakable sound of our thin blue door being slammed shut.
I threw my duvet off and looked around the bedroom, half wondering if this was just a practical joke that Tiber was playing on me; perhaps he would jump out from behind one of the empty suitcases that were piled up in the corner.
There was no sign of him.
15
‘Tiber?’ I said aloud, cautiously at first and then louder, and louder still. ‘Tiber? Tiber?’
There was no answer.
I didn’t need to go downstairs to know that I was alone, but I went into each room anyway.
Without Mum cooking something on the stove or Tiber wandering around distractedly, tapping on his phone, each room felt alien to me.
It was more than the rooms just being empty.
It was like I had never been into them before.
There was so little of us in these rooms. Our things were all here of course; our clothes and bits, a couple of framed pictures of Dad and us together, open packets of food we had eaten. But there were no happy memories made here, no stories that these walls could tell. As I looked around at our scattered belongings, it was as if we were only staying here for a night or two, passing through on our way to somewhere more permane
nt. It didn’t seem possible that this was now the place we called home.
I shuffled back upstairs to my bed. Although I felt sure that sleep wouldn’t come, I felt more secure there somehow. I arranged my duvet around me like a fort, plumping up my pillow so that I could sit up comfortably to look out of the window. And then I waited, I watched. Waiting for Tiber’s return.
I looked up to see if I could find the moon. The sky outside was orangey, not really dark because of the light from the streetlamp. It was a very different sky to the one I knew from home, where darkness fell like a curtain, very quickly, very suddenly, densely black and obscuring all the light.
There was no sign of the moon tonight. I looked at the road instead. It was empty, but after a little while I wondered if I could see things in the shadows. Darting movements. Figures in the blackness. Though when I tried to look for them, they seemed to disappear into the darkness as though they had never been there at all.
At first I wondered if this was all Tiber; joking around, thinking it was funny to dance in the shadows, teasing me. But another part of me doubted that even my brother was capable of such a drawn-out joke.
I felt myself spiking with the unfairness of Tiber leaving me all alone in this strange house. Dad had spoken about treating each other as we would want to be treated ourselves. I couldn’t help thinking that I would never have left Tiber alone by himself here, because I wouldn’t want him to do the same to me.
In the end I stopped looking for him.
My gaze rested on the lamppost and the bin.
A piece of furniture had been dismantled and left there, leaning against the bin. Boxes were stacked with what looked like bricks and pieces of rubble, piled up and abandoned. A broken umbrella poked out at an angle.
But among it all, my eyes were drawn to that little sliver of space between the lamppost and the bin.
I thought that, if I waited long enough, I might see the person who had been leaving things there.
I watched two boys walk past very slowly, but they didn’t stop. Another couple shoved some rubbish into the bin, but after they had hurried on nothing had been left in that space.
For a very long time no one else came. I stared out at the empty street and the shadows until the pavement started to merge into the road, the lamppost into the bin, trees into sky. I was falling asleep. My eyes were beginning to weigh down and close, but just then I saw a flicker of movement outside, something darting across the street in a rush, which made me sit up, rouse myself so I could see what it was.
It was a dog. It ran out in circles across the road, its huge grey head swinging from the ground to the air, trying to catch a scent of something. I recognized it as the one from the house next door, and sure enough, I saw the old man shuffle into view.
I don’t think I made a sound or anything like that. I didn’t have the light on and I was sitting very still, but at that moment the old man stopped.
He straightened as if he had noticed something, and then, all of a sudden, he looked up.
Right towards my window.
Right at me.
16
I dived down under my duvet and pulled it over my head. I tucked my body underneath so there was not a single part of me showing.
My eyes were closed tightly. Even though it was impossible for anyone to see me through the window now, I kept absolutely still.
I was too afraid to look out again.
Lying there in the darkness, wishing for Tiber, wishing for Mum, wishing I wasn’t all alone, I felt completely helpless. There was nothing I could do, nowhere I could go, no one who could help.
I thought for a moment about small, fearless Betsy from next door.
She wouldn’t hide under the bedcovers.
She wouldn’t be scared.
She would tell herself that the door was locked, that she was safe. That it had just been a coincidence, the old man looking up at the window.
I stepped out of bed tentatively, making the loose floorboard squeak beneath me, and thought of all the things I had stowed there.
That was it!
I pulled up the floorboard and reached for the matchbox. I carefully fished out the contents, and held it enclosed in one hand. I didn’t squeeze it tight as I had the other things because it was so delicate, but I felt the usual little shift, a twitch of movement. I knew it would work.
Let Tiber come back, let Tiber be safe. Let Tiber come back, let Tiber be safe.
I hadn’t even thought it three times before I heard the sound of a key in the front door and then the steady jog of his steps coming up the stairs.
As he came into our bedroom, I flicked on my lamp. ‘Where’ve you been?’ I demanded.
For a moment Tiber looked surprised, shocked, even ashamed to see me, and then his features rearranged themselves and his expression changed to one of indifference. He shrugged his shoulders and, ignoring me, kicked off his shoes and threw his jacket onto the end of his bed.
‘Tiber, you just … you just … left me. I didn’t know what had happened. When Mum finds ou—’
‘But Mum isn’t going to find out, is she?’
‘But—’
‘Leelu, don’t make this into such a big deal. I came back, didn’t I? Everything’s just the same as it was. Don’t say anything to Mum, OK?’
‘But, Tiber, you know it wasn’t—’
‘Look, I won’t do it again, all right? But please don’t tell Mum.’
‘You promise?’ I asked. ‘You promise you won’t leave me alone again?’
‘Of course,’ Tiber said. His face looked like he was telling the truth – his eyes were wide, with nothing to hide – but I realized I couldn’t see his hands. I remembered the way he crossed his fingers when he was making Mum a promise he didn’t want to keep.
‘Show me your hands and say it,’ I said.
Tiber huffed, but he did as I asked, splaying his fingers out wide in front of him. ‘I promise I won’t leave you alone again.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘I won’t tell Mum. Or Dad,’ I added.
‘Great. Can we go to bed now?’
‘I suppose so,’ I said.
I couldn’t fall asleep though. I tossed and turned, and as soon as I started to drift off, some noise, whether outside or inside me, woke me. Each time I checked that Tiber was still there. He was oblivious to my worries: he started snoring almost as soon as his head hit the pillow and slept heavily through the night.
The next morning he was up before me, eating breakfast, showing no signs of having been out late the night before. There was a dull but persistent ache in my head. I didn’t know if it was from lack of sleep or something else.
It was only as I slowly trudged to school, my head thudding painfully, that I remembered, like a weight bearing down on me, the man from next door last night. The way he had looked up, straight at our bedroom, and seen me at the window.
However much I tried to convince myself, I felt that somehow he had known I was there – although there was nothing to give me away; no light, no sound, no movement.
How could he have known? The thought made me feel uneasy. I remembered his dog’s great head, swinging down to the ground and up again, and shivered.
When Mum picked me up from school that day and asked me how I was, I said with a forced smile that I was fine. She didn’t question me further and I didn’t tell her anything about the night before.
That evening, as he had promised, Tiber didn’t leave the house. He seemed unsettled and prowled around, unable to be still for long. In the end he took up residence on the sofa, stretching across the whole length so there was no room for me. I went up to our bedroom.
I took up my usual post at the window.
The evening had not yet faded to night. I looked down the street, my eyes immediately going to the space between the bin and the lamppost, as they always did. There was nothing there, so I contented myself with looking at everything else. A breeze blew through the trees, making the leaves so
und like rushing water. Just then there was a burst of movement from the house next door. I saw Betsy out front, this time without her gaggle of brothers. She dashed up to our front door and knocked three times. Her small fist made a surprisingly loud noise that echoed through the house.
I flew downstairs and, before Tiber had risen from the sofa, flung open the door.
‘Hi, little fish,’ she said when she saw me.
‘Little fish?’
‘That’s what I call you. Because that’s what we’re like. Little fish in big pond.’ She gestured at the buildings that surrounded us on every side.
Back home, there were spaces that seemed to go on for ever; you could walk and walk and never see a building, or a car, or a wall.
Here, there were walls everywhere. Grey lines drawn all around, cornering you, trapping you into tight spaces.
‘Hi, other little fish,’ I said back.
Betsy started laughing. It was a deep gurgle of a laugh. ‘I come round to see if you want to play football tomorrow. After school. My dad will be out, and so tomorrow we play.’
‘Why does your dad have to be out?’
Betsy waved her hand in the air as though batting away a fly. ‘Tell you another time.’
‘Yes, sure. I won’t be very good – I’m not good at—’
‘That’s why we play,’ Betsy said simply. ‘OK, I go now, little fish.’
‘Bye, other little fish.’
She gave another gurgle-laugh and left.
If Betsy hadn’t come round that night, I probably wouldn’t have seen it. From my bedroom window I didn’t have quite the right angle.
At the bottom of the little space between the lamppost and the bin there was a small package. It was wrapped in newspaper and tied with string in a loopy-looking bow. It must have fallen down and was now lying on the ground, almost obscured by a bag of empty beer cans.