I was on the school bus, going home that day, when I found it. I opened my bag to get out my book, and spotted it straightaway. It was tucked inside the secret pocket where I keep my spare pen and my money for lunch. Of course there was no change today, but the pocket was bulging, as that’s where I’d put the bag of sweets. He must have seen the sweets: He’d tucked his envelope behind them.
I wasn’t worried about that. I’d take them round to him later on. I was far more worried about the look he’d given me at the science wall. What I was doing there with Alan, why I’d hung back when I could have stepped forward: Those things would be more difficult to explain.
But once I had, everything would be fine.
I didn’t open the envelope at once. His final note. I’d open it just as I’d opened his first: in private. I stood in our garden, thinking, First and last, beginning and end. A late apple fell just in front of me, and hit the brick path with a juicy smack. It had started to rot on the tree, and lay, split open, in the mess of its own brown pulp. I stepped over it on my way to Don’s shed.
I sat on my old wooden box. In a way, it was like that very first time. But now there was no sensation of being watched. (Not even the spider seemed to be there.) And now I knew what I would find: the place. The last bit of information.
As I unsealed the flap, I tried to think of good places to fly a kite. They had to be wide and open, with plenty of room to get a good run.
I took out two slips of paper (one for me, one for Maisie) but didn’t yet let myself look at the words.
The run was important to give that upward launch. I pictured a field, maybe even the playing field at school. A hill would be good, but there weren’t any hills round here.
And then I looked.
I looked at both slips, just in case they were different; they were the same. Although the words were in English, they didn’t make sense.
I thought of the apple falling from the tree and smashing on the path. I looked at the words on the bits of paper again, and now I could read them.
“Motorway bridge. Southbound carriageway side.”
I began to understand.
Everyone knew the motorway bridge: an ugly straight line, crossing high over Hinton Road. You’d be mad to take a kite there. It would be way too dangerous for that. It wasn’t a place for an upward launch, but a downward drop. I thought of Mr. Smith’s sticky brown mixture of beeswax and blood, just before half-term. He’d been talking about Icarus, of course. Icarus’s end.
I banged out of Don’s shed and sprinted back up the path, leaping the split-open apple. We’d done Isaac Newton at school, so I knew that falling apples could teach you a lot. Isaac had seen one and understood gravity: So had I. I’d seen what would happen if you jumped off a motorway bridge with a hard tarmac surface below. Wings or no wings.
And I had to get to Bogsy. I had to make sure his plan took that into account. I know how stupid it sounds, but you see I was hoping I was wrong about the bridge.
Each time I’d done something over the past few weeks, I’d thought I was doing something big. But I wasn’t. The Do Nothing kid I’d heard Mum talk about: I knew who he was.
And I thought I’d changed. But I hadn’t. Till now.
I rushed straight round to Bogsy’s front door and rang the bell.
And only then, as I waited, did I consider how his mum might be feeling about the fight.
What if she was angry? What if she’d had to take Bogsy to the hospital? I hoped she had. If they kept him in hospital overnight, at least he’d be safe. And if she stayed there with him, I wouldn’t have to face her now.
She hadn’t taken him to hospital. But, when she opened the door, she didn’t seem angry. Far from it.
“Oh, Alex!” she said. “You are a good friend. Thanks for coming. I knew you would!”
“I need to see him,” I said. “Right now.”
“Yes, of course. He’s down in the shed.” She hurried me through.
There were several unopened birthday presents and cards on the living room table. I half wished I’d brought the bag of sweets, but perhaps it was best I’d not.
“You mustn’t worry,” she said. “He really isn’t as bad as he looks. I’ll bring down some cookies—no, cake—in a while.”
He looked totally awful. They’d tried to clean him up, but the blood from his face had gotten into his hair—and they hadn’t washed that. (Perhaps he hadn’t let them.) It had dried dull black and made the hair clump together in an awkward way on one side.
And his face! Half of it was so swollen that the eye was shut. Bruises are meant to be black and blue, but Bogsy’s face was green. He looked like a ghoul. He could have gone trick-or-treating without a mask and still scared everyone.
Now I was in the shed with him, I couldn’t think how to begin. Not by saying happy birthday, that was for sure. He fixed me with his one good eye, but didn’t try to help.
“Your mum seemed pleased to see me,” I ventured.
“She thinks you’re my friend.”
“Well … ” I didn’t want to get into this. The atmosphere was tense.
“I’ve told her,” said Bogsy. “Only cretins and thugs at that school.”
“But what about me?”
“Only cretins and thugs.”
“But I’m not like the others!”
“No?” He jutted his swollen face forward and pointed.
“That wasn’t me!”
“You were there!”
“Only because … I was going to … ”
It sounded feeble. I knew he wouldn’t believe me.
And yet I hoped one day he would.
“And this?” He lifted his shirt. Another great bruise spread over his ribs.
“That wasn’t me!”
“Well, it wasn’t Rob Bonebrain.”
“It was Jack!”
“Yeah?” said Bogsy.
He thought it was me! Now I knew what that look by the science wall had meant.
“It was me who went and got Mr. Smith! You can ask him! As I was going, I saw Jack … ”
Bogsy looked at me shrewdly, as he’d looked at me once before, in this shed. But before, he had looked with two eyes, instead of just one. I waited in silence. Before, there’d been slips of paper to signal the end of his calculations.
There were no slips of paper this time—not counting the ones scrunched up in my pocket—nothing to show what he’d decided. When he finished staring and bit into an apple, I hadn’t a clue.
But I’d nothing to lose.
“I came to say something important.”
“Don’t bother,” he said. He took a step forward, so I took one back.
“Your note … ”
Another step forward, and another back toward the door, for me.
“If you jump off that bridge tonight … ”
One more step—and now I was outside the shed, and he’d closed the door to a crack, through which he was looking with his one good eye (which was all he needed in this situation).
“If you jump off that bridge,” I said to the eye, “if you—jump”—the eye narrowed—“well, it’s dangerous.”
To my surprise, he started laughing, but it wasn’t a cheerful sound.
“I just hope you’ve got a good plan!” I said desperately.
But he’d shut the door.
As I ran to the wall of garbage cans, I heard someone calling my name. It was Bogsy’s mum. She sounded upset.
“Alex! Alex! Don’t go! Please!”
She was coming carefully down the garden, holding something against her chest, protecting it with her arm. I realized it was his cake and she was trying to keep the candles alight.
I pulled the cans apart and dived through. I landed on an actual pumpkin, a big one, and felt it split, but ran on, up our garden.
I would have told Mr. Smith now, if I could. He’d have sorted this out. But he would have gone home from school by now, and I’d no idea where he lived. There was only o
nce place to go, one person to help me.
Maisie had been right all along. She was always right. She’d seen danger. I’d barely seen past the end of my nose!
The bus might not come for half an hour, so I got out my bike and started to cycle.
Maisie would say, I Told You So. If only she’d been more insistent! She’d seen how things were. It was all her fault!
But, of course, it wasn’t. I’d thought I knew best. Donald had urged me on, too. When I got to The Laurels today, he’d probably make some ridiculous joke about how come I hadn’t brought him a slice of birthday cake?
But when I turned into the parking lot, I knew that Donald couldn’t be there. There was nothing banana-colored in sight. Which was good: I’d have Maisie all to myself.
Confusingly, though, when I knocked on her door, it was Donald who called, “Come in!”
Straightaway, I knew something had changed. I’d missed last Saturday’s visit—that’s all it took—and they’d gone and done something behind my back. Although I’d done things behind theirs, I didn’t expect them to do the same. And yet they had. Something was definitely different in Maisie’s room.
It reminded me of a book Auntie Jen once sent, called The Railway Children. According to her, it was Timeless; according to me, it was just very old. But the last page must have stuck in my head. The long-lost dad came back to the family home, and went in through the door. That’s it. Why it was memorable was the reader wasn’t allowed to go with him: We were left outside. They’d got their happy ending in there, and everything was so lovely for them, they didn’t want us around. It choked you up.
I’d never felt unwanted when I’d been to visit Maisie. The times I’d been turned away, in the old days, it had been by the person in reception, never her. And then when Donald had come, the two of them always made me welcome. But now, although Donald had said come in, I felt there was a second door, shutting me out, an invisible one. Maisie had obviously been crying, but not in the old sad way, I thought. Donald was holding her hand, though she pulled it away as soon as she saw me. I felt I’d intruded on something and wanted to leave.
But I did what I tended to do on occasions like this: said something stupid.
“Where’s your car?” I asked Donald.
“In the parking lot.”
“It isn’t,” I said.
“Ah, hawk-eye!” He smiled. “You don’t miss much! You’re right, the banana’s not there: I took it back to the rental place today and got a new one.”
“A new banana?”
“No! I bought something decent, from a garage.”
“Oh.”
“You know why?”
I shrugged. “Had enough of … ”
“No! The point is I bought one. Come on! Why d’you think I’d do that?”
“Now who’s teasing!” said Maisie. “Just tell him.”
“Well … ”
But she didn’t let him say. “The great booby!” She actually clapped her hands and laughed. “He’s not going back to Australia!”
“Ma’s been missing me.”
“Nonsense!” said Maisie.
But he just said quietly, “She needs me. So I’m staying.”
Now it made sense, this feeling I had. This was their happy ending. I was supposed to shut the book.
It may have been theirs; it wasn’t mine, though. What if I made them listen to me? I could say I was sorry for not having listened to Maisie, then show them the final Icarus message. They had to help; no one else could.
And yet they were no longer interested. They obviously hadn’t even remembered that this was November 2.
I stood in the doorway and knew it was hopeless. All I could think of was shouting, How d’you make someone change their mind?
Because that’s what it came down to, really. Just that.
Maisie must know. She’d made Donald. What was the trick?
And as I stood there, Maisie stepped in.
“What’ve you been up to, then? Anything interesting to report?”
I couldn’t think where to begin. There was far too much. It would take too long. But I tried. I had to.
“He shut the door in my face.”
No, begin at the beginning.
“We went trick-or-treating,” I said, “he made a mask, he nearly got beaten up. Then he did—get beaten up, I mean. There was a fight … ”
It sounded all wrong. It was just a muddle.
And then I surprised myself by saying, “But I know what it’s all about!”
I hadn’t known I did till then. It was simple, though.
“His dad left. That’s what. And other things, too. But nothing he couldn’t have handled … if his dad hadn’t gone.”
“Oh!” said Maisie. “I see.”
“He gave these out today,” I said, pulling the slips of paper from my pocket. I handed one to Donald and one to her, as I didn’t need mine anymore.
“Get my specs, Alex, please, from the table,” she said. Then she read the note.
A short silence followed, while they both took in the words.
“Well,” said Maisie then. “This looks bad”—she reached for her necklace—“but as you’re his friend … ”
I lost patience. “I’m not! That’s what I’m trying to say! I messed up!”
“What did you do?” said Donald, and Maisie shushed him.
“It doesn’t matter. But he’ll never trust me now!”
“Never say never!” said Donald in a stupid singsong voice. “There’s always tomorrow … ”
“There isn’t!” I shouted. “Today is November second! Remember? Icarus Day! He could die!”
“Never say—”
“Donald, shut up!” said Maisie. “Let’s think. So he’s missing his dad, is he? Well … ”
“We can’t get in touch with his dad!” I stamped my foot. “We don’t have his number.”
“We don’t,” said Maisie. “But somebody might.” She looked at me sternly. “You need to calm down. You’re overheated. It’s not helping.”
“We could go for a spin in the car?” said Donald. “Get some fresh air. I could drive you home?”
“No. I cycled. I’ve got my bike.” I didn’t say thanks.
“Well, I hope you’ve got lights,” said Donald. “You may need them.”
“What d’you mean?” But I saw what he meant. Outside the French windows, the sky was dimming. I glanced at the clock on Maisie’s wall.
“It’s okay, look. Still plenty of time.”
“You’ve forgotten,” said Donald. “Clocks changed last week. It gets dark an hour earlier now.”
I had forgotten. No, I hadn’t, I just hadn’t taken any notice. I’d thought the sun could be trusted to set at six forever and ever.
But all things change, even clocks. You’d think I’d have learned.
“Got to go!” I said. “Got to catch him!” I suddenly saw myself standing with arms outstretched, underneath the motorway bridge, to catch Bogsy like catching a cricket ball hurtling toward me, out of the sky. But it wasn’t funny. It could happen.
“I mean, got to catch him before he leaves … ”
Maisie was holding out both hands toward me. She wasn’t holding the necklace now. She’d never been gentle with me before. “Alex, come here.” But I didn’t have time, and she dropped her hands in her lap.
“Good luck!” she said. “Trust your instincts. They’re good.”
Wrong! My instincts were useless! If it wasn’t for them, this wouldn’t be happening!
“Don’t think too hard!” she called after me, down the corridor. “Keep a clear head!”
Everyone else in The Laurels would hear, but she didn’t seem to mind. Maybe some of the more confused should take her advice.
I’d never cycled so fast in all my life. Well, perhaps I had on Halloween night, when we’d had to escape Alan Tydman. But apart from that.
When I reached the top of Lark Lane, the sun hadn’t set, but that did
n’t mean Bogsy hadn’t yet left. He’d need to leave in good enough time to be there before everyone else, wouldn’t he? I wondered if I should go straight on, as he’d almost certainly be ahead by now. I stood with my bike, breathing hard, unsure what to do. And as I was trying to decide, a bike came toward me, up the lane.
When it drew level, I pushed my own bike out in front of it, so that it had to swerve and the rider nearly fell off.
“What the … ?!” He faced me angrily. “You?!”
“Sorry,” I said. And then again, “Sorry,” though this was for something else.
He still had only one working eye, which he fixed me with challengingly.
“You gonna mess things up?” he said, as he’d said once before.
And so we were back to square one.
Only we weren’t. This time, I’d keep a clear head.
“Gonna come with you,” I said, and without really knowing what I meant: “Gonna help you.” Maisie had said, Don’t think too hard, so I didn’t.
Bogsy was getting impatient. There was no time to argue or do math. He muttered something I couldn’t make out, but chose to think was All right then. And when he set off, I went with him and he didn’t seem to mind. Or perhaps it was more that he realized it would have been pointless saying get lost.
He didn’t have the wings, which was strange, but meant that we could have been any old kids from school on our way to the show.
Far away from the boys on their bikes and the show about to begin, on the far side of Burstead, a country road leads out from the town. Houses are strung out a certain way along it, and most have their lights on, their curtains drawn. The one at the end does.
The one at the end has a big square sign sticking out from the wall, and a couple of benches stacked up beneath. It isn’t a house, but a pub. Nobody sits on the benches at this time of year, but inside, it’s cozy. A real log fire has been lit and the first of the evening drinkers have gathered. They call to each other in cheerful voices, and take their turn at the bar.
“Hey, Titch, what’s yours?” calls one of them to a man sitting by the fire.
The man by the fire has two glasses already—someone else has just bought him a second—but he grins and calls back, “Same again!” He’s come here to drown his sorrows and they’re going to take a lot of drowning.
The Icarus Show Page 12