Boys & Girls

by Paul Burston

  I don’t know if she answered, because my world went black.

  I woke up on a thin hospital mattress with an oxygen mask on my face. My mum was sat by my bed with a plaster on her cheek, clutching my hand and looking drawn. When she spoke, her voice was small, quiet.

  ‘They’ve been taking blood every hour because your white cells are really low; your counts are lower every time they take readings. They think that’s why you collapsed. You know, because of your…illness.’

  ‘You can say the word, Mum. It’s called HIV, and I think we both know it wasn’t to do with that.’ I felt guilty for snapping but I needed her to take charge and be my mum, not this feeble, squeaky voiced thing impersonating her.

  ‘Where’s Stuart?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s gone, Josh. Please, darling. I’m dealing with enough at the moment. I just want you to get better and get you home. That’s all I want to concentrate on.’

  ‘Mum, you saw me, you saw Stuart. Don’t act like it didn’t—’

  ‘Josh, please.’ She looked at me beseechingly. Begging me to allow her the luxury of denial, pleading to stay blind to the truth. And I knew the conversation was over.

  After a few days, my white blood cells — or CD4 count — levelled out and they discharged me, but I spent the next two weeks in bed with some sort of flu bug. The doctor said it was probably a viral thing I’d caught in hospital while my immune system was spazzing out. Nothing some rest wouldn’t cure.

  Mum and I didn’t speak about the events of that day again, but Ellie came round to see me after college a lot. At first, she didn’t believe me when I told her — but I suppose telling your best mate you’re telekinetic is a lot further up the things-that-are-hard-to-accept scale than telling her you have HIV.

  But I have to say, I was surprised how long it took her to come round to the idea. Ellie loves anything like that: Smallville, X Men, Harry Potter, she can’t get enough of it. I had half-expected her to have me dressed in a cape and tights within a week.

  I practised a lot. In my bedroom, after college. I’d line up objects of different sizes and weights and concentrate on them, trying to make something happen. Sometimes I managed to make something roll or fall off the desk, and I could float light objects, stuff like that. Nothing in the same league as a whole person, though. Most of the time I just gave myself a nasty headache. I had a headache most days back then. They usually went away after I’d had a nap. Ellie said she was worried about me.

  ‘You look thin,’ she said to me one day. We were lounging on my bed, idly chatting and playing with our phones. I always find it weird how phones have taken over our lives. Ellie and I would always be doing something on our phones, even when we were supposed to be spending time with each other. Sometimes we’d be in the same house and yet be texting each other.

  ‘Better than recently,’ I replied. I’d had flu yet again — the second time in a month.

  ‘Suppose. You still look thin, though.’

  ‘Ellie, I already have one mum, I don’t need another.’

  ‘I’m just saying. I’m worried about you, Josh. I don’t think it’s such a good idea, you know…what you’ve been doing.’ Her face grew serious. ‘I’ve been doing some thinking. What if…’ she paused, ‘what if the virus somehow altered your genetic makeup and is the reason you’ve developed these…powers? Know what I mean?’

  ‘What a pile of crap.’

  ‘It’s not, you know. Think about it. When was the first time your powers manifested?’

  ‘Would you stop calling them that? You make me sound like a prick.’

  ‘OK, abilities. Jesus. You queers are so touchy. Anyway, it was the day you got diagnosed at the clinic, yeah? When you had the panic attack?’

  ‘Well, yeah. But I’d caught the virus way before that. I know who gave it to me, remember?’

  ‘You’re missing the point. Before that day, you’ve had dramas, you got angry, yeah?

  ‘Yeah, but I don’t see —’

  ‘Nothing weird ever happened though, did it? You’ve never made so much as a pencil roll across a desk, know what I mean? So the question you need to ask is: what changed?’

  I closed my eyes and sighed, ‘Does it matter, Ellie? I’m tired. I was at it for three hours today.’

  ‘Yes, it does matter, Josh. You can’t see it, but it’s all linked. And anyway, that’s beside the point. Whether or not catching the virus was the cause of these abilities, it’s becoming clear that the more you mess around with them, the more you deplete your system. You’re going to do some serious damage to yourself if you carry on, and you —’

  ‘Oh, here we go.’

  ‘— need to stop trying to develop it. You’ve told me yourself it gives you a pounding headache. You were laid up for a fortnight after the whole incident with your mum’s boyfriend. You’ve been ill more times than I can remember in the last few months. Your mum told me the hospital is worried about your CD4 count, you have bags under your eyes and you’re so bony I’m scared to hug you in case you snap.’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Ellie, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You fucking freak.’

  ‘Me a freak?’ Ellie shot back. ‘I’m not the one who goes around blowing up cups of coffee just by looking at them, am I? No. That would be you, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Just shut up, Ellie!’

  ‘Or what?’ her voice sizzled with anger. She stood up and faced me square on, jabbing her finger into my chest, ‘Are you going to do your funky little mind-ray thing and blow me to pieces too? Is that what you’re going to do, Superboy? Hmm? Well, be careful — we don’t want you getting all sick again, do we?’

  ‘Ellie, just shut up.’

  She crossed over to the window, throwing her arms up in exasperation ‘Grow the fuck up, Josh, you can call it what you like: superpower, freak coincidence, act of God, genetic mutation — who knows? You may have been abducted by aliens and injected with some sort of super-juice for all we know. But whatever it is, you need to get off this little I-want-to-play-superhero trip because it’s hurting you!’

  I rounded on her. ‘You think I’m doing this for fun!? You think I want to get dressed up in spandex and fly around the world dragging people out of burning buildings? You grow the fuck up, Ellie! I need to get control over it because it TERRIFIES me! I can’t walk around scared I’m going to send something into orbit —’

  ‘Josh…’ Ellie said my name, trying to calm me down, but I didn’t want to listen.

  ‘— or blow it to bits! Something like this should be used to do good in the world, not —’

  ‘Josh, you need to calm —’

  ‘— Will you LET ME FINISH!’ My eyes felt hot and my brow was buzzing again, ‘I’m scared stiff, Ellie! I feel so alone! It keeps happening and I don’t know how to control it! And every time I try to I —’

  ‘JOSH!’

  ‘WHAT?’

  ‘Stay very still and don’t move a muscle. Just look.’

  I looked around my room.

  Every object in it had lifted from where it had stood and was floating half a metre in the air, which had grown humid and heavy with static. I realised I could hear the thrumming, rumbling noise again.

  ‘Don’t speak.’ she walked slowly back across the room so that she ended up right behind me, speaking gently and hypnotically, like you would to a child, ‘Don’t look at me. Just concentrate. Concentrate on the things in the room. Hold them there.’

  My forehead buzzed harder, like someone was holding an electric toothbrush in between my eyes, but this time it felt different. Rather than the painful, all consuming sensation I’d had before, where the normal and the super-normal had clashed together, fighting each other for space in my reality, they had fallen together in synergy. I felt in control now. It felt… right.

  Slowly, perfectly, I allowed the furniture and objects to sink gently back to where they’d started. The thrumming noise faded, the thickness in the air lifted.

  We could ha
ve stood there hours for all I know. Quiet. Awestruck. I felt…different. Somehow complete. Like I’d just taken a deep breath and exhaled. I sat on the bed, suddenly very tired.

  Finally, Ellie spoke quietly. ‘You know, I can’t think how you must feel, Josh. I’ve tried to put myself in your place, but I really don’t know what it must be like. All I know is that I’m frightened for you. Call me selfish, but you’re my best friend, and you’re fading away. I don’t want to lose you.’

  ‘What would you do, Ellie?’ I replied, ‘What would you do if you were given a chance like this? Would you ignore it and hope it goes away and just pray you don’t cause a disaster the next time things get out of control? Or would you try and harness it, so that one day you might be able to do something amazing?’

  ‘But look at you, Josh. What’s the point of half-killing yourself in the hope you might one day do something amazing with these abilities? What’s the point of wanting to save the world, if you’re dead before you get the chance?’

  ‘It’s my life — my choice. What’s one life compared to the lives of many?’

  ‘It’s your life, Josh. And it’s a gift, so please don’t throw it away.’

  I felt so at peace right then. So calm. ‘I’ve been given another gift, Ellie, something huge. I can’t sit back and do nothing about it. Don’t try and tell me you wouldn’t do the same. If you were given the choice between saving yourself and saving the world, you’d save the world, every time.’

  ‘There are other ways to be a hero, Josh.’ She said. ‘The world always needs saving, you know — it just seems like a big job for just one person.’

  ‘You have to start somewhere.’ I said.

  She gave up arguing with me. I’m a stubborn fucker sometimes. Mum says I get it from her.

  ELLIE:

  You know, I remember that morning in July so clearly. It was my birthday, and Josh was taking me in to town to do some shopping. We decided to go in early so we could get done and nab a decent spot in one of the parks for the rest of the day. I couldn’t quite believe he’d dragged his bony arse out of bed so early, but there we were, heading into town on a packed tube train in the morning rush hour.

  He told me he’d been ‘practising’ a lot. I told him he looked thin.

  It was a little before nine o’clock, and we had just left Kings Cross on the Piccadilly line when the bomb went off.

  The reports say the train was only five hundred yards from the station. That’s where it was found, at least. I know that line like the back of my hand, you know, and I can tell you we were a lot further into the tunnel than that.

  We were in the second carriage, near the back when he turned to me and said, ‘Something’s wrong.’

  Don’t ask me how he knew. Maybe he’d developed some sort of Spidey-sense by this point, but he shot out of his seat and planted himself in the middle of that carriage just as the far end of it exploded.

  The train rocked, people screamed as they were tossed like rubbish. I went flying into the people sitting opposite me. I righted myself and saw him standing there in the middle of the gangway with this visible, but at the same time unearthly energy coming from his hands. It was clear and rippling — almost glasslike — but not solid, know what I mean? And it had wrapped a perfect, terrifying, sphere around the explosion, trapping it before it had torn the carriage apart.

  The lights went out and chaos found us. Screaming commuters trampled over each other in their panic, the air was saturated with smoke. I managed to pull myself to my feet and snatch hold of one of the ceiling straps.

  Something hit me in the face, I don’t know what, but I barely registered my broken nose, or the blood dribbling from it. I was coughing and covered my mouth with my sleeve so I could breathe more normally. The number of people in the carriage seemed to have tripled — at least that’s what it felt like, you know? There were bodies everywhere — some moving, some not. I squinted and tried to fight my way through the pandemonium to get to Josh.

  He was — with visible effort — pushing his hands closer together, compressing the flowing liquid-glass sphere and the vicious fireball inside, squeezing the life out of it. He was bathed in the light from the inferno he held captive, but more than that, he himself seemed to radiate his own light, you know? Like it was coming from within him. The air was thick with noise, all underpinned by a thrumming vibrating sound, like a jet plane flying too low, but I could hear his voice with perfect clarity above the din.

  ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen when I let go!’ He cried.

  ‘Josh, just…please!’ I yelled back, trailing off into a croak, trying to say a thousand things at the same time — I love you, don’t leave me, help, I don’t want to die, I don’t want you to die — but I was hollowed out with fear and empty of words — know what I mean?

  ‘Get out! Just get everyone out! I can’t contain it!’

  I looked at him helplessly, tears mixing in with the blood and dirt on my face and he bellowed ‘ELLIE! GO! NOW!’

  As I span round, I glimpsed his arms faltering and I heard a loud CRACK as a shockwave knocked me off my feet and shot me towards the back of the carriage. I hit my head and blacked out.

  I don’t know how long I was laying there; I came around to the sound of a deafening hum. The carriage lurched and gave a terrible screech. Metal shrieked on metal as the train was dragged back along in the direction it had come. I tried to see properly, but the blood from the cut on my forehead had got in my eyes and had turned everything pink and blurry, my nose was pulp and I could only breathe through my mouth. I was aware that Josh was no longer in the carriage and my last thought before unconsciousness swallowed me was: how is the train moving?

  They found him on the tracks about a hundred metres into the tunnel. He never regained consciousness. I went to visit him every day in hospital, hoping I’d walk in and he’d be awake, but he never was. He just got thinner and paler, and despite doctors starting him on antiretroviral therapy, his CD4 continued to drop daily, until he had no immune system left. He died of pneumonia three weeks later. It was like using his ability so heavily had drained the life out of him — know what I mean? I suppose the virus just took over.

  It stunned me at first that nobody questioned how the train ended up almost back where it started in King’s Cross, helping those inside to get to safety quicker, or why the explosion didn’t do more damage.

  Some people said they’d felt the carriage moving. Others either didn’t remember or chose to forget. Eyewitness accounts of that day were all conflicting anyway. It’s not surprising when you think about it. When you’re trapped deep underground in a smoke-filled train, terrified you’re not getting out alive, your mind can play tricks on you.

  I gave my own edited version of events, my head wound supporting my claim that I’d been knocked unconscious when the blast hit and I didn’t remember a thing. Of course I didn’t tell them there was more than one explosion in the carriage that day.

  Experts said the Piccadilly Line explosion had a different pattern to the others. Press and the public were told that this was due to the tunnels being single-tracks with only a fifteen centimetre clearance around the edges for the train to pass through. This confined space reflected the force of the explosion back into the carriage and concentrated it in a tiny area.

  I didn’t bother to correct them.

  That was five years ago now. It’s taken me this long to feel ready to talk about what happened. I’d like to say writing it all down gives me some sort of closure, but even after all this time I still I have more questions than answers, know what I mean? It’s my responsibility, though — to finish his story. I feel I owe him that much, at least.

  I’ve rented a safe deposit box, and I’ll put this document in it, along with some videos he made of his practice sessions. Maybe one day I’ll be ready to share his story with the world. Not yet though.

  I’ll remember July 7,2005 for three reasons: The first because it was my eighteenth bi
rthday, the second because it was the day terrorists attacked London.

  The third, because it was the day my best friend became a hero.

  MALICHI

  THE ALBERT KENNEDY TRUST

  I was born in Bangladesh. My father is from Pakistan and my mother is Bengali. I identify myself as an Asian gay Muslim.

  I moved here when I was 12. I had very traumatic childhood. I was always getting beaten up by my dad. He’s very religious. He’s an Imam. It wasn’t because of my sexuality, because I didn’t know I was gay then and it isn’t something people talk about. My family knew I was girly but people in Bangladesh are in denial about these things

  I came here to King’s Cross to live with my cousin. I was still a young child. I should have been living with my parents but I wasn’t. I was living with people I didn’t know. My cousin’s wife wasn’t very accepting of me. She thought I was a burden. So it was very hard for me.

  I was 15 at the time and just before I did my GCSEs, they kicked me out of the house. Actually I was kicked out twice. The second time it happened the school called social services. I was fostered in Kingsbury. It was a very nice experience. My foster parents were Ethiopian, and very Christian. I was very proud of myself because I didn’t have any problem whatsoever. I was an Asian Muslim living with African Christians, and I never had any problems. To me, we’re all human beings, and they were very accepting of me and my culture and my religion.

  My foster parents are the ones who treated me the way I should be treated, so I call them my mum and dad. They had two children of their own. The eldest moved out, so then I was the oldest. And then they fostered some other children. Before me, they only ever fostered Ethiopian children. But I was a good experience for them. I think I must have been a revelation for them, because after me they fostered children from other parts of the world.

  My life is full of drama. I could make a film. Now I can laugh about it, but there was a time when I used cry about it. I tried to commit suicide twice. One time when I was back home, and one time when I was living with my cousin. I just wanted to die. My mum was always very nice to me but my dad was abusive. He used to beat me and my mum. I was the only child, and the only reason I’m here now is because of my mum. She sent me away for my own protection. Everything came to a head when my dad tried to sell me to a man who lived in Dubai. He wanted money. My dad stopped me from going to school and made me go to work. My mum couldn’t do anything about it. We were a poor family from a rough area, and life was hard for her.