Up on Cloud Nine

by Anne Fine

  “Well, so long as he promises to go.” She didn't quite add, “And get killed,” but you could certainly hear her think it. Especially when she had to pull Tom's quite disgusting trousers up before unbuttoning her skirt to step out of it.

  Stol handed her Tom's sweater. “And your top.”

  She did the weirdest thing I've ever seen, but, sure enough, after a few strange bulges, out it came suddenly from under Tom's sweater.

  Tom climbed into the skirt.

  “Shoes!” Stol said, looking down at mine, which were too small by far. Stol's feet are even smaller. In the end, with a great martyred sigh, Mr. Kinnear exchanged his giant boring clumpers for Tom's weird raised sneakers. Poor Mr. Fuller's look of pure relief when Tom turned up again, in full school uniform, was worth the trouble of rushing down three corridors and arriving hot and panting. He ordered the hooting to stop at once, hushed up the wolf-whistlers and the gigglers, rushed Tom to his place, and even managed to start the exam on time. I reckon he'd have brought a tea tray to Tom's desk if it had been allowed, such was his gratitude at being saved from letting a moment's irritation blight a young life (and the blistering tongue-lashing he'd have had from Mrs. Garabour).

  Stol was the hero of the hour, of course. (Though Madge did earn a certain sort of dark respect for walking round for three whole hours in Tom Dunn's grubby clothes.) But all the credit ought to go to Tom. I know worse things happen, even in basic training. But Tom will be all right. Only a boy of true courage could stride with dignity through a set of double doors, skimpy top clinging to his chest, a girl's skirt flapping at his hairy thighs, and, enduring the gauntlet of two hundred watchful pairs of eyes, sit down, and then pass quite a stiff examination.

  visitor

  The moment Mum went off to buy her billionth cup of tea, up oiled this woman. I think I have the gift of spotting people out of uniform. I was suspicious at once.

  “Your brother, is he?”

  He might as well be, when it comes to it. I didn't quite dare lie, but did manage to give the impression I'd nodded.

  “Bit of a fracas back at the house?”

  Police officer, was she?

  I played dumb. “Fracas?”

  “Well, from a peek through the windows, things did seem in a bit of a mess.”

  That didn't sound right. Stol's room might be a pit, but if he so much as leaves a sock draped over a banister anywhere else in the rest of the house, Esme takes a fit. And I've seen that Mrs. Leroy of theirs get the floors mopped back up to her employer's high standards even before we're done tracking across them.

  “Mess?”

  “Stuff all over. Laundry strewn over the floors and hanging off doorknobs.”

  And suddenly I thought, that stupid tea towel with the knots! If I'm honest, I was furious. If he had been awake, I honestly believe I might have socked him on the first bit that I could find that wasn't broken. How could your best friend even think of— How could he even imagine—

  But this police officer in disguise was watching closely, and I thought, Tread carefully; don't get Stol in trouble. We have a boy at school who took some pills once. Now they never let him be. Even months after, they still watch Rupert every day as if he's leaning too far out of a window. When he sighs, their eyes narrow. If he makes a joke, they're looking for something behind it. If he dared hand in a poem the slightest bit gloomy, they'd be making sly phone calls, then listening out for the sirens.

  Stol couldn't stand it. No. I know Stol to his boots. He couldn't stand it.

  Though I'd not spoken, still this visitor took a seat. And suddenly I wasn't just suspicious, I was positively sure that she'd waited till Mum was gone to slip in and ask her questions.

  “So would you say that Stuart here was in a state?”

  I pretended to give this some thought. “No.”

  “No family quarrel?”

  “I don't think so.”

  “Things did look a bit—chaotic.”

  Well, so they would, with Stolly turning the house upside down to find his tea towel. My mum bought him that. Ten Very Useful Knots. It was her last-ditch attempt to get him confident about his shoelaces before the move up to the main school. I was quite envious, as I recall, because it was brilliant. It had instructions for the Flemish Loop, the Carrick Bend, the Bowline on a Bight, and seven others.

  And which of the diagrams did I suddenly suspect had sent Stol scattering laundry over his mother's perfect floors?

  Oh, only the one at the bottom. The Hangman's.

  sickness of soul

  You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to work it out. Stol's always given much more thought to “Life” than I have. (Hard to give it less.) He falls in anguish at the smallest things. Only the day before, he'd got in quite a deep spat with Mrs. Garabour about not speaking up when we say grace. “I can't,” he wailed. “Firstly, I have stopped thinking God exists. And, even if I hadn't, I'd still believe he ought to be doing something a little more useful than hearing me go on about being grateful for a salad.”

  So let's not claim Stol never paddles through dark thoughts. But up till now, give or take the odd funny mood on a high car park parapet, his motto's been “Onward and upward.” Certainly the only time I've ever known him truly sick of soul was when his dad went berserk from hearing Del and the Stompers.

  We'd known that Mr. Oliver had a tough streak since that business of the devil on Stol's shoulder. But just what a dark side he hid beneath those expensive suits and fancy spotted neckties was not quite clear till, for Stol's birthday, I bought Del and The Stompers' Greatest (and Loudest) Hits. Stol loved it—played it all the time. Suspiciously, after a week, our music center stopped working and Dad didn't seem in any hurry to fix it. So we decamped to Stol's, and gradually the din of the best tracks juddering away down the house turned Mr. Oliver quite ratty.

  First, he insisted we wore our headsets.

  “Can't stomp in headsets,” Stol explained to him.

  “Try!” snarled Mr. Oliver.

  But, what with the stomping, of course, both sets soon got broken. Esme came to the rescue, bringing home from the World of Esme a box of two hundred surplus (tr: unsellable) pink angora earmuff headphones. They might have looked good—if you were a child of three—but the sound reproduction was rubbish, so we never wore them.

  And Mr. Oliver got rattier and rattier, till one day, when I was there as well, learning a new stomp from Stol, he cracked and, ignoring me, stormed up and dragged Stol down both flights of stairs and straight out of the back door.

  “Get in the car. Now!”

  Bemused, Stol stumbled in, and Mr. Oliver slammed the door on him and got in himself. He wouldn't let me come, so I just waved them off, with Stol making howshould-I-know-what's-bugging-him? faces through the side window and Mr. Oliver driving in a frenzy over every single speed hump between their house and the corner.

  Stol told me afterward that his dad had driven him straight to the Law Courts. They'd parked in a space marked RESERVED FOR SENIOR COUNSEL, and people in gold braid had pulled their forelocks as his dad strode past.

  “Not pulled their forelocks!”

  “Well, you know. Scuttled out of his way, bowing and scraping, with many an oily ‘Good morning, Mr. Oliver.' ”

  “Showed a bit of respect, you mean?”

  “Possibly,” Stol said sourly (though on the whole he was quite proud of having a distinguished father). “I suppose so.”

  “What happened then?”

  “He only dragged me through a few million paneled rooms with carpets ankle-deep in fleurs-de-lis.”

  “Fleurs de what?”

  Stol ignored me. “Then down stone steps, along a hundred green corridors with livid strip lighting, and through a door labeled Video Link Interview Room.”

  “Weird …”

  “It was a weird room,” Stol confessed. “Pretend cozy, if you see what I mean.”

  “No.”

  “Well, there was a warm-colored mauvy-pink c
arpet, but it had coffee stains all over it. And though the walls were a nice pink, they had scribbles and scratches, so they looked rather nasty. There were even a few pictures. One was of a stag in a forest, but someone had drawn a mustache on it.”

  “What was the furniture like?”

  “There wasn't much. A couple of chairs in the corner, and one slightly more comfy one in the middle, bolted to the floor.”

  “And nothing else?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said bitterly. “A big wide mirror.”

  “Two-way?” I asked suspiciously.

  “I reckon.” Stol scowled again. “Anyway, at least by then I knew it was the music that had put him in a bate, because he'd been muttering about it all the way as we drove. But I would never have thought my own dad could have done what he did.”

  “What?”

  Stol spread his hands. “Unbelievable! I sat in the only halfway-comfy chair and suddenly my own dad's voice is pouring out of these speakers I hadn't even noticed were there. ‘I'll teach you what it's like, having to listen to music you can't stand! I'll show you!' And out pours this awful, awful noise.”

  “What noise?”

  “Edmund Forlando and His Orchestra's Song of Strings.” Stol shuddered. “It was horrible. It just went on for hours. All whiny and swoopy and sentimental and ghastly. I know it was a two-way mirror because each time I stuffed my fingers in my ears to blot it out a bit, they turned it louder.”

  “Grim!”

  “I practically came unpicked.” He sighed. “My own dad! Who would have thought it? Torturing his own flesh and blood with granny music!”

  “Cruel!”

  “That's what I thought. And in between ghastly pieces, this awful Edmund Forlando fellow would even introduce things. He kept saying things like ‘Now, here's a lovely old number many of you will remember. Not only is it tuneful, with a melody to set your feet tapping, but it always reminds me of ocean waves lapping at coral shores. Do even hum along with us if you choose.' ”

  “Oh, Stol! Your own dad!”

  “I know. My own dad! Don't think I wasn't in despair. But then an odd thing happened. I suddenly realized I'd begun to think about the chair I was sitting in and all the sad souls who had sat in it before me.”

  “What sad souls?”

  “I don't know. Whoever has to use a video link to give their evidence in court. People who've squealed on drug dealers or Tong gang members, maybe. And weeping kids saying, ‘Yes, I saw Daddy put the carving knife in Mummy's tummy.' That sort of thing. And there I was, just sitting in it to be played some horrible music.”

  Thoughtfully he hummed a snatch from Song of Strings.

  “And suddenly I thought, Life's so unfair.”

  And, honestly, I do believe Stol might have cried if Del and the Stompers hadn't been coming right to the best bit, where we have to stamp in unison on the floor and point at the ceiling while swinging our arms round.

  Next day, when he was still looking a little bit gloomy in class, Mr. Tully asked, “What's up with Stol?”

  I didn't see any reason not to explain.

  “He's sick of soul,” I said. “He thinks life's unfair.”

  “Ha!”

  Mr. Tully clearly wasn't going to give houseroom to sickness of soul or life being unfair as excuses for not paying attention. He went over and pushed Stol.

  “Think life's unfair, do you?”

  Stol nodded mournfully.

  “Yes, well,” said Mr. Tully. “Look at it this way. Life's being so unfair is what makes it so interesting.”

  And he went off to tell Maria to stop feeding Gregory bits of her sandwich.

  Stol was quite taken with the idea of Life's unfairness being “added interest.” Like “extra bleach.” He brightened up at once. So, next day, when Mrs. Hetherington said to him sternly, “I hope your mind is going to be on what we're doing, Stol. I've been hearing about you in the staff room,” he answered, beaming, “No. It's all right. I have decided sickness of soul is a personal weakness, not a valid philosophy.”

  homework

  About ten minutes ago, I heard faint tap-tapping on the glass panel of the door at the end of the ward. Since Mum was deep in the problem page of her Pretty Miss Petticoat, I got up and went over.

  Out in the corridor there was a youngish woman in leather jacket and trousers. She had a motorcycle helmet dangling from her belt and was holding a clipboard.

  She glanced up and down the almost empty ward. “Package for Paramour.”

  “Me,” I said, then pointed to Mum still deep in her Pretty Miss Petticoat and added, “Or possibly her.”

  She looked at the list on her clipboard. “Ian James,” she said, and pointed to the blanks. “Print here, please. And sign there.” She filled in the date and time before moving away. I went back to my chair and ripped open the sealed plastic package she'd given me, with Mum sitting there trying to pretend she was still reading Pretty Miss Petticoat and not being nosy.

  Inside was a thick gray envelope with Stol's father's firm's name printed across the top in curly raised letters.

  I turned it over. On the back Jeanine had written, “No hiding place, Ian!”

  I tore the envelope open. Out fell a dozen faxed and e-mailed absentee homework slips, all filled in by teachers whose classes I had missed that day or might miss the next day. I was outraged. Quite outraged. One day! One poky day! And there they all were, getting in touch through Jeanine as fast as they could, as if they suspected me of spending the missing hours lounging with my feet on the end of Stol's bed, chewing gum, playing hand-held computer games and whistling.

  I looked at Mrs. Hetherington's. Physics.

  Describe in as technical terms as you can manage any equipment around Stol's bed. Try and explain the principles on which you think each works. Diagrams will be welcome.

  Bit weird. But if I'd missed what they were doing in class that day, I suppose it made some sort of sense.

  Almost.

  I looked at Mr. Bryson's. Chemistry.

  Study the labels on all the drug packets, drip bags, etc., round Stolly's bed. Copy them out neatly, paying particular attention to the spelling. Find out what you can about each drug and its uses from the professional staff around you.

  Maths. Mr. Hopkins.

  Clipped to his slip were three pages of photocopying from our maths revision textbook. His orders were:

  Revise weights and measures, and decimals. Using details from Stuart Oliver's current drug regimen, offer five examples of how a lack of knowledge or accuracy in either could prove disastrous.

  English was: Write about your day. (Three full sides, please.)

  Clipped to it was French: Translate at least twelve lines of the attached into French.

  Art from Mrs. Floo was: Sketch what is on all four sides of you. Make each of your renditions as realistic as possible.

  Teachers. They spend their whole lives acting as if no greater fortune could come their way than that the whole class might fall down a cliff and leave them in peace and quiet. And then just one of their charges tumbles out of a window and they can't rest until they know exactly what's going on, how bad it is, and what's likely to happen.

  Interesting, eh?

  nothing from sports, though

  Nothing from sports, though. Maybe that's not surprising, since Stolly wriggled out of games more often than a girl. They use the usual excuses; Stol simply hid.

  The habit began one day when he'd just run my blood cold with one of his horrible stories. “So to get away from the bullies, this kid hid in one of his school's changing room lockers. But when he tried to let himself out again after the final bell rang, he found the catch had dropped, and he was so tightly packed in, he couldn't shift round to unpick it. He banged and banged, but all the pupils and teachers had gone home, and the janitor never happened to come within earshot.”

  “So what happened?”

  “He suffocated overnight.”

  I stared at the five li
ttle holes drilled in a neat pattern on my locker door. Up till that moment, I hadn't realized why they were there.

  “But the worst is,” said Stol, “that no one realized. I guess if no air can seep in, then no smell can seep out. Everyone who looked at that locker just assumed it was already being used that day, or had jammed shut. It ended up being ignored. Then, years later—”

  “Oh, no. Not years!”

  He grinned. “Yes, years. The changing rooms were being tarted up at last. Some workman forced the locker open with his chisel to paint the edges, and out tumbled this shriveled, wizened little body with floating hair and a mummified face. Still in its games shorts and sneakers.”

  “God, Stol. That's horrible!”

  “Isn't it?”

  It didn't put him off his plan, which was to skip games and spend the time scrunched, reading, in a locker. It got to be a habit. I'd keep a lookout while he clambered in, and then, when those of us who aren't allergic to fresh air and exercise roared back an hour later, I'd rat-tat our signal on the door to let him know it was us. Out Stol would tumble, grousing about cramp, or numb fingers, and filling me in on whatever he'd been reading.

  “We won!” I'd interrupt. “Creamed them, five nil! What with Jack being off, they were rubbish!”

  He'd wait till I was through, then choose a few more highlights to share from Locker Reading Hour. I doubt if he was even sure which game it was that we'd just played. Stol took no interest in sports at all. To him, they were just boring. If I complained, he'd put me down with some astonishing statistic. “Did you know, Ian, that people worldwide have wasted a cumulative forty-seven billion hours watching other people chase balls around pitches?”

  “No, Stol,” I'd say. “I didn't know that.” I'd turn away, to talk about the match with someone else. It was the nearest the two of us ever came to quarreling. I'd charge in there, stuffed with high spirits, tingling and powerful and feeling so good, and his sheer lack of interest would really annoy me.