by Jeff Povey
I still haven’t been ‘touched’ by Another-Billie and have scars and cuts and bruises all over.
‘Thanks, mate,’ I told her.
Billie stared at me as her memories flew around inside her head.
‘You remember anything?’ I asked her tentatively.
‘Sadly,’ she said.
‘I know it wasn’t really you,’ I told her.
‘I was so angry with you,’ she whispered. ‘Raging.’
‘I do that to people,’ I joked.
‘But I wanted to kill you, Rev.’ Billie seemed to shrink back into herself and pulled her arms around her with a shiver. ‘Can we go back to being what we were?’
I reached for her as she unfolded her graceful arms and reached for me. We met in the middle and clung to each other as hard as we could.
‘I’m already there,’ I whispered to her and then held her even tighter as she began to cry.
Evil-GG climbs back in through the broken window, ready to attack. ‘Who wants to taste the talon?!’ he yelled before Non-Ape backhands him straight out of the window again.
‘That is so not funny!’ Evil-GG cried.
‘It’s peace and love, dude. Get used to it,’ Other-Johnson called to him through the shattered window.
‘Can you find your Rev?’ I transmit to Other-Johnson.
‘Already have,’ he sends back.
‘And?’
‘It’s going to take a bit of explaining,’ he sends.
‘But is she OK?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And is there anyone else out there?’
Other-Johnson took a long moment to scan the airwaves. ‘Nada,’ he says eventually. ‘Least no one I can pick up.’
I study the Ape, so silent and so ready, on the highest alert. ‘There is.’ I assure Other-Johnson. ‘Or there will be. We’d better get Non-Ape fed.’
I want him as huge as he can grow. The bigger he gets, the stronger he gets.
‘Anyone want Chinese?’ I ask the carriage.
Everyone seems agreeable to that apart from the Moth who sits with Lucas and Carrie. Despite her kiss and despite seeing his best friend again, he can’t shake the dread that’s enveloped him since we found him at the Shopping Centre. His eyes find each of us in turn and he nods.
‘We need to leave,’ he says.
‘Right now,’ echoes Moth Two.
UNFORTUNATE COOKIES TAKE TWO
My dad can’t use chopsticks. He keeps trying to, but every time he raises a sweet ‘n’ sour prawn to his lips it falls back into its china bowl. My mum, who isn’t my mum, laughs every time he does it.
Every.
Single.
Time.
We’re back in the Chinese restaurant that looks out over the high street. The same waitress quietly serves us and I’m doing my best to force the food down my gullet. My dad hasn’t brought up the New-Moth’s murder – which is what it is, there’s no other word for it – but then again he hasn’t had the chance. New-Mum and he met me from school after detention as usual, and we went straight to the Chinese restaurant.
They’re used to me being late because of the detention, but what they don’t know is that I dragged it out as long as I could. Me, New-Johnson and New-Billie explained to New-GG, New-Carrie and New-Lucas what we were planning to do. They took some convincing but New-Johnson is proving to be very charismatic and determined. New-Carrie was her usual poisonous self, but New-GG was excited by the thought of it. He seemed to be concerned that he’d never find any new fashions if he couldn’t escape this town. He was joking of course. I think anyway. New-Lucas was gutted that New-Moth was dead and it motivated him to make a slightly trite speech about not going gently into the good night. We then spent the whole of detention trying to find a portal. But when you don’t know what you’re looking for it’s actually impossible to find.
Everyone lost heart quite quickly, but New-Johnson and I kept everyone afloat – just – with the thought that there is a door somewhere. And, let’s face it, we have many many recurring days to finally find it.
Sad-Ape, steadily climbing towards the bullish man-boy glory of a real Ape, was all for going to my dad and hitting him until he told us where the portal was. But I’m scared stiff that the minute my dad (or Non-Dad) gets wind of another attempt at an escape he’ll send me away to another world, then go looking again for a replacement.
‘Make any new friends?’ New-Mum asks as she picks up the fallen prawn in her chopsticks and feeds it to my dad.
‘Yes,’ I smile. ‘Yes, I’ve got at least six. There were seven . . . ’ I look directly at my dad. ‘But he went away,’ I say. ‘No idea where.’
My dad drops another prawn and when New-Mum giggles I momentarily wonder if I’ll ever again see my real mum laugh again. Once I sneak out tonight and meet the others, I guess I’ll find out.
‘Six friends is just as good as seven,’ my dad tells me.
‘Not when you know there should definitely be one more,’ I say, not meeting his eye.
The tension between us would be evident to a blind person, but New-Mum is completely oblivious and claps when the waitress arrives to take our dirty plates and leaves fortune cookies for us. She has only had to serve us tonight. There are no other diners in the restaurant.
‘I love fortune cookies!’ New-Mum says, rather predictably. ‘Open yours first, Rev.’
I look at the cookie she offers me and eventually take it from her. She looks on, eager, anticipating the message. I break open the fortune cookie and remove the piece of paper. I quickly clear my throat.
‘This is a good one,’ I tell them. ‘This is almost perfect.’
My dad’s eyes meet mine. He’s trying to warn me not to make trouble or cause a fuss. He doesn’t want New-Mum getting upset.
‘Goodbye,’ I read.
New-Mum falters. ‘That’s not a saying.’ She frowns.
‘Goodbye,’ I repeat.
‘Are you sure it says that?’
My dad’s jaw tightens and I know he’s becoming emotional. ‘Rev, please,’ he whispers.
‘Read it,’ New-Mum says to Dad. ‘She’s teasing us.’
I offer the motto to Dad, but as he reaches for it I let it drop to the carpet. Even before he can bend to retrieve it the waitress is there, falling to her knees to find the motto for him. She hands the piece of paper to my dad who nods his thanks. He clears his throat just like I did; it seems we share some habits.
‘ “Today it’s up to you to find the peacefulness you long for,” ’ he reads.
‘Just what I said,’ I say to them. ‘Goodbye. It’s the same thing.’
New-Mum claps and then pushes another fortune cookie towards my dad. ‘Your turn.’
Just like he will do for the rest of eternity, or until the darkness blots the last of this world out, Dad weakly pushes the fortune cookie back towards her. ‘You do it, you love them.’
‘It’s yours.’ She bats it back playfully.
‘I insist.’ His eyes light up as he gazes at her. A version of a woman he tore the order of the universe apart to keep happy.
‘I insist,’ she tells him, giggling now.
‘No, I do.’ Back the fortune cookie goes.
‘Uh-uh, I said it first.’
I think about smashing the fortune cookie with my fist again. But instead this time I let it play out to see what happens.
‘You do it,’ he tells her. More forcefully this time.
‘Oh, if you insist.’ She smiles and cracks open the cookie. ‘ “Your smile is a passport into the hearts of others.” ’ The words seem to take her by surprise and she looks like she might cry. ‘Isn’t that beautiful?’ She takes my hand in her right hand and Dad’s in her left and we form half a seance as she grips our fingers tightly ‘This is beautiful. This is all I ever wanted. It was horrendous without you both. Horrible. It was all the nasty words you can think of. But here we are. Back together. How it should be.’
She continues
to grip my hand with a strength that defies her slim build. My shoulders start to tingle again. ‘It’s just so beautiful and even the fortune cookie agrees.’ She laughs. But tears roll slowly down her cheeks. Tears of happiness? My hand is starting to go numb she’s gripping so hard. ‘No more nasty thoughts haunting my days, no more wondering, no more loneliness. This is how things should have been all along.’ She smiles then lets our hands go.
I shake my hand under the table while my shoulders scream at me. New-Mum pushes the last fortune cookie towards Dad and a flicker of something crosses his face. It looks like fear.
‘Read it,’ New-Mum tells him. And, despite her smile and his need to be in love with her, he knows he is doomed. This is his lot for as long as he can stand it. Living in a carbon-copy world with a carbon-copy family. I fight the urge to feel pity for him. What he did to my friends in the empty world was wrong on every level.
I can’t get the taste of chicken chow mein out of my mouth. I shovelled an entire plateful down my throat because it meant I could avoid talking to them at dinner, but now it’s like it’s still lurking, hovering above my stomach and filling the back of my throat.
I glance at my bedside clock. Nearly midnight. New-Mum and Dad both went to bed about an hour ago. I don’t know if he hoovered up the ash from the burned formula, but somewhere within the body of our ancient vacuum cleaner lies the greatest discovery humankind ever made. In flaky black slivers of ash that crumble the moment you touch them. Trying to open it and tip the contents out on to a piece of newspaper in complete silence is both painstaking and nerve-jangling. I’ve developed this theory about the ash; if I spread it, as if it was a cremated body, then perhaps some of its latent spirit will somehow have survived. Ridiculous, I know, but that’s where I am.
I’m dressed in jeans, a T-shirt and the thickest pullover I own, hand-knitted by New-Mum, and far too long but perfect for the cold night that awaits me. My phone pings with a text. Damn it! I forgot to turn the phone to vibrate. I wait, wondering if the loud echoing ping has woken New-Mum or Dad. There is no movement in their bedroom next door so I switch the phone to silent and read the text. It’s from Sad-Ape.
yowza
The word nearly knocks me off the edge of my bed. The Ape’s favourite word ever, used on countless occasions. Some things never change.
Yowza, I type back. And wait.
u ready? he sends back.
:) I head for the bedroom door.
same, he responds.
I gently open the door and peer out into the darkness of the empty hall. It’s such a small flat it’ll take me about a millisecond to reach the front door. The chain is on and when they see it hanging loose tomorrow morning they’ll immediately know I’ve run away, even before they check my room. It’s a deliberate echo on my part because my dad will have to relive everything he felt when he first discovered his little Reva wasn’t in her bedroom. This might sound cruel but that one’s for New-Moth.
The plan is for everyone to meet in the school classroom and not leave until we unearth the portal. Spreading the ash of the formula in some ridiculous ritual is the best idea I’ve come up with so far to try and spring the portal to life.
i said me too! Sad-Ape seems to want a response.
The light from his text illuminates the hallway making it easier for me to manoeuvre down it without crashing into something or tripping over. I pop the edge of the phone in my mouth, gripping it between my teeth, and using both hands I very gingerly slide the chain from its latch.
My phone vibrates with another impatient message from Sad-Ape. It rattles against my pearly whites and makes a louder noise than it should.
I hear a cough.
I fall silent, not moving a muscle, not daring to breathe.
Another impatient message rattles against my teeth, and my mouth must be acting like a speaker for it because to me the rattle is louder than a heavy-metal band. I spit the phone into my cupped hand and ease it into my back pocket.
I hear whispers.
They’re both awake.
The snib is still down and, just like in my real flat, it sticks because it’s such an old lock. I’d forgotten that sometimes you have to shove your weight against the door to release it, not easily done quietly. My phone vibrates twice more in quick succession. Sad-Ape has no patience whatsoever and I’m surprised he isn’t banging on the door and ringing the bell.
I can’t make out what Dad and New-Mum are saying but a bedside lamp is turned on. I can see the flood of yellow light squeezing between the gap between the floor and the door.
Do I run?
Or do I pretend I was just going to the loo? But why would I have got dressed to do that?
‘It’s nothing.’ Dad’s voice is still a whisper, but louder now, as if for emphasis.
‘You sure?’
‘Go back to sleep.’
‘My head still hurts,’ New-Mum moans lightly.
‘Hang on, I’ll get you some more pills.’ I hear their bed creak as he climbs from it.
That’s it.
Game over.
My phone vibrates over and over and I realise Sad-Ape is now phoning me. Even after I clearly explained in great detail that he should never do that because silence and subterfuge were of the highest importance.
‘Hey,’ New-Mum’s whisper stops my dad.
I press quietly, but with as much force as I can on the door and get ready to push the snib down.
‘Yeah?’ My dad stops.
I have to time this right. I have to push the door at the exact moment there’s some noise to cover it. Conversation might well do it, if only they’d talk a little louder.
My phone has thankfully gone to answerphone, ending Sad-Ape’s incessant calling.
‘I could live these days forever,’ she tells him.
They’ve given up whispering.
‘We will,’ my dad promises.
‘Over and over,’ she replies.
My phone starts vibrating because the answerphone is now telling me I have a message. Sad-Ape has left a message?
‘Over and over,’ he repeats and I go for it, ramming the snib down and even though it clicks, I’m pretty sure Dad’s voice has drowned it out.
‘She’s not how I thought she’d be,’ New-Mum adds. And I can’t help it, I’m intrigued now. ‘The other one was a lot more loving.’
‘It’s the same person.’
‘I know that,’ she says. ‘And eventually she’ll be like my little Reva.’ There’s some serious and confusing insanity going on here and I pull the front door open as quietly as I can. ‘A mother’s instinct is a strange thing. I can’t have her disappearing again. It’d kill me.’
‘That won’t happen. I promise,’ he tells her. ‘She’s staying right here. There’s no chance she could disappear, . . . I made sure of it.’
I remember the ash on my school blazer. The formula that is no more.
‘Promise me?’ New-Mum has a true pain trapped in her voice.
‘It’s all as it should be now. Nothing can change that; there are no doors she can walk through, no trains or buses that she can take. All roads only lead to home. To here.’
And weirdly I hope he’s right. That all roads, or even just one, will lead me to my home. My real home.
Tonight’s desperate mission has to work. I ease out of the door and close it very gently behind me, praying that when my dad eventually does go and fetch some headache pills he doesn’t see that the chain is off the latch.
The shadows are darker than ever, but I’ve become used to the concrete steps and glide serenely towards them. Until a huge figure lumbers out of the darkness and grabs me. It’s all I can do not to scream the neighbourhood down.
‘Why you not texting?’ Sad-Ape asks. He’s out of breath because he has hurried here. He’s sweating even in the cold and he smells strongly of BO. I ease from his bear-like arms. He was worried about me and I like that he charged up to see what was happening. He’s turning more and
more into a real Ape.
‘Was trying to sneak out,’ I whisper.
‘Why not tell me that?’ he asks.
‘Because I was trying to sneak out silently.’
‘But I didn’t know that.’
‘You did – I told you earlier!’
‘No need to shout. You’re meant to be doing this quietly,’ he says. ‘Stupid.’
‘I’m not the stupid one,’ I whisper to him.
‘Ha – gotcha!’ he whispers back as we hit the street that will eventually lead us to the others.
He’s already driving me mad.
‘So gotcha.’ He snorts.
We pass under the light from one of the street lamps and for a very brief second I can see the Ape again. My Ape. And because of that I can forgive him anything.
THE LAST DAYS OF CUISINE
Rice.
Mounds of it.
Heaps upon heaps of it.
Filling plate after plate and spilling over the edges on to the carpet.
It’s all anyone knows how to cook. Rice. And some soy sauce if you want to add a little flavour. GG has been arguing with Evil-GG over who is the best chef and their argument can still be heard from the kitchen of the Chinese restaurant.
‘I can do a million things with rice,’ one of them says.
‘I can do a million and one,’ the other GG says, and no one can tell which is which without seeing them.
‘Name them.’
‘Name them?’
‘Name the million and one things you can do with rice.’
‘Have you got a spare lifetime?’
‘I have got that, yes, indeed I have, right here in my pocket.’
‘OK. Here’s the first name of a rice recipe. You ready?’
‘I’m almost wetting myself in excitement.’
‘Thought you were just standing funny.’
‘The recipe.’ One of them snaps his fingers impatiently. ‘What’s it called?’
‘George.’
‘George?’
‘Your face. So perfect and yet so frowny.’
‘Then let me step aside and allow the master chef take over with his million and one recipes for a rice based dining experience.’