Twenty Questions for Gloria

by Martyn Bedford

  “I think he’s got supernatural powers.” Tierney made her voice go all spooky.

  We laughed.

  “Seriously, though,” she said.

  “Tier, we’re not characters in a fantasy novel.”

  “Novels.” She acted puzzled. “Are they the things that films are made from?”

  Right above her were three shelves crammed with books. We lay head to toe on Tierney’s narrow single bed, each of us on our iPads. Her bedroom smelled of peaches and cinnamon from the scented candles that burned on her windowsill.

  “So, what’re you saying?” I asked. “He dematerialized?”

  “It’s an option.”

  “And don’t tell me he hypnotized us—we never got near enough.”

  Tierney had a theory that Uman used eye-to-eye or physical contact to assert his will over people. Mr. Brunt, for example, at tutor time. Tierney herself. With Ms. Vaux, in Geography, over his bangles. Individually, these “episodes”—and the stunt he’d just pulled on us on the way home—might be explained away. Somehow. Added together, though, they formed a pattern of weirdness. Weirdery, as we decided to call it.

  “How did you do that?” I’d asked him at the end of the footpath.

  “Do what?” Uman said.

  “You were in front of us and now you’re behind us.”

  “Ah, but it’s also the case that you were behind me and now you’re in front.”

  “Come on, Uman, you must’ve done something.”

  “It certainly seems as if one of us did.”

  Tierney flashed him her prettiest smile. “Whatever you did, it was pretty cool.”

  “Hey, your English has really improved,” he replied.

  “My English?”

  I tried not to let her see my amusement.

  “But please don’t flirt with me, Tierney,” Uman said. “I’m only interested in Gloria.”

  Tier’s eyes widened. “I wasn’t flir—”

  “Why were you following me?” Uman interrupted, addressing me.

  “What?” I was still getting my head around what he’d said to Tier. “We weren’t following you—we live here.” I pointed along the street toward my house. “This is our route home.”

  “You need to be more subtle. Frankly, as surveillance goes, that was amateurish.”

  “You need to get over yourself.”

  “You’re still upset with me about my remark at break time, aren’t you?” Uman said. “I only hope it’s delayed our impending relationship, not wrecked it altogether.”

  “Our what?”

  “Anyway, I’m afraid I have to go now,” he said.

  His parents were expecting guests for supper and he had to finish his prep before they arrived. With that, he left—turning back up the path toward the footbridge. This hadn’t been his route home at all, I realized.

  “Just so you know, I really wasn’t flirting with him,” Tier said in her bedroom.

  “It wouldn’t bother me if you were.”

  “You’re my best friend, Glo-Jay. You’re in an impending relationship with him.”

  I let out a snort. “Yeah, right. What is one of those?”

  My bare feet were beside her head on the pillow. She squinted at them. “Your toenails need repainting, missy. Want me to do them?”

  “Go on, then.”

  Tierney swung off the bed and went over to her dressing table. “What was all that about him upsetting you at break time?”

  I hadn’t told her what he’d said about me being unhappy. “Nothing. Just…he was, you know, being the way he is. I knocked him back.”

  “So, do you like him?”

  “Uman?”

  “Yes, Uman.” She selected a bottle of nail polish. Put it back, chose another. “He told Ryan Jacques he has a tennis court in his garden.”

  “I hate tennis.”

  “What’s tennis got to do with it? We’re talking about the possession of a tennis court.”

  “Tier—”

  “And what the hell’s ‘prep’?” she asked, still foraging among her makeup stuff.

  “It’s posh-speak for homework.”

  “It’s his first day at a new school—how can he have any homework?” Tier held up two small bottles. “Aquamarine Glitter or Speckled Plum?”

  “Both,” I said. “Alternating toes.”

  As she painted me, I figured it out. Uman must have ducked under the steps leading down from the footbridge, waited for us to overtake, then snuck up behind us. The discovery of a nonsupernatural explanation was a bit of a letdown, to be honest.

  But Tier was right—it was still a pretty cool trick.

  —

  Uman was so sure about “us.” He had decided we were meant for each other and so it would come to pass. In a way, I found it quite funny, and I suppose I should have been flattered, but there was also something wrong about it. I don’t just mean his arrogant assumption that I was his for the choosing. It wasn’t right—wasn’t normal—to breeze into someone’s life and latch onto them in the way he had done with me.

  Who was he? Why was he being like that? Why me?

  The rest of that evening, that night, the next morning, I barely thought about anything else. Even when I was asleep, I dreamed of Uman. A nightmare, really: a rerun of the scene on the way home; only this time, as I’m following him—alone, no Tierney—other people keep trying to obstruct me. Friends, my parents, my brother, teachers, strangers. They block the path, grab my arms—and all the time Uman is disappearing along a path that seems to go on forever.

  Please, I have to catch him!

  I woke up, sure I’d shouted it out. But no one came to my room to see if I was okay.

  Walking to school the following day, I made Tierney promise to sit next to me at tutor time no matter what. I’d decided to put the brakes on Uman—let him know that he couldn’t take me or my friendship for granted, never mind a relationship. It was too much, too soon. That was what I would say to him: Uman, it’s too much, too soon. We’d known each other twenty-four hours. He had to give me space. Had to be less full-on, less…weird. I had it all rehearsed in my head.

  But Uman wasn’t in school that day.

  Or the next. Or the next.

  If the teachers knew why, they weren’t letting on.

  In those three days, his absence made his presence on Monday seem all the more fantastical. It was almost as if we’d imagined him. Then, on Friday morning—just when we were wondering if we’d ever see him again—he sauntered into tutor group. Easy as you like. He’d shaved off his scruffy stubble and wore his hair in a ponytail, fastened with a purple scrunchie. The last to arrive, Uman apologized to Mr. Brunt for being late and made straight for the vacant seat next to Luke. He didn’t look in my direction.

  Stunned silence. This entrance was somehow even more dramatic, more captivating, than the one he’d made on Monday.

  Mr. Brunt didn’t ask where he’d been for the last three days, or demand a note, or ask if he’d been unwell and say that he hoped Uman was feeling better. None of that. He simply said good morning and carried on. If anything, this heightened the tension. Like a leopard had loped into the room and climbed onto one of the chairs and the tutor was pretending not to notice.

  A boy at the back punctured the silence. “Nice ponytail, gayboy.”

  Mr. Brunt looked up sharply. “Callum Rudd, I will not toler—”

  Uman raised a hand to silence the teacher. It’s okay, his manner suggested, I can handle this. Then, turning to address Callum directly, Uman said, “Your assessment of my sexual orientation is statistically inaccurate, I’m afraid. As a rough estimate, I’d say that eighty percent of the people I find sexually alluring are female.” Eyeing Callum up and down, he added, “But don’t worry, you definitely aren’t in the other twenty percent.”

  The room exploded with laughter. Some students even applauded.

  —

  That day, Uman paid me no more or less attention than he did anyone else.
Treated me the same as them, spoke to me no differently, behaved perfectly normally around me. Neither friendly nor unfriendly. We were two students who happened to be in the same tutor group and the same class for a handful of subjects. It was as if we’d actually had the conversation I’d rehearsed and he was respecting my wishes. Backing off, giving me space. Being less weird.

  With me, anyway. With teachers, Uman scaled new heights of weirdery.

  For example, in Religious Education, he informed Mr. McQueen that he would prefer to spend the lesson reading poetry, as he’d already familiarized himself with the major religions and they had nothing more to offer him.

  The teacher blinked several times. “I’m highly impressed, Uman,” he said, heavy on the sarcasm. “Fifteen years old and you know all there is to know about religion.”

  “All I need to know, sir. And my name’s pronounced oo-maan, not you-man.”

  “Well, Ooo-maaan, let me make it clear that, no, you cannot read poetry in my class.”

  “Would you rather I went to the library to read?” Uman pushed his chair back and stood up, gathering his belongings.

  “Sit down, Mr. Padeem. You’re going nowhere.”

  Uman remained standing. “I’m afraid I don’t take orders, sir. There should be a note about it on my file if you care to look it up.”

  A few people had laughed when Uman said he wished to read poetry. No one laughed now. On the interactive whiteboard behind Mr. McQueen, the Microsoft logo flitted about the screen like a mutant moth butting repeatedly against a window. The teacher stood for a moment, gazing up at the ceiling panels, as if intent on counting them. He cleared his throat. Looked at Uman. This time, he asked him to sit down, with a “please,” and without the sharpness of tone.

  Uman sat down. He read poetry for a few minutes, then set the book aside and paid attention to the lesson. He joined in the discussion (about the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, I think) and completed the written exercise we were given.

  At the end, he approached Mr. McQueen. “Thank you, sir. That was very stimulating.”

  —

  Outside in the corridor, I fell in step with Uman. “Why are you like that with teachers?”

  “I don’t know.” He sounded genuinely troubled by the question. “I can’t stop myself.”

  I asked what he meant but he said it was difficult to explain.

  “You disapprove?”

  “Not really. I’m not sure what I think.” After a moment, I said, “The teachers cut you a hell of a lot of slack, don’t they?”

  “It certainly seems that way.”

  “It’s like you have some kind of hold over them.”

  He coughed. Two sharp, harsh hacks. “It certainly seems that way,” he managed to say.

  “Or like they know something about you that makes them back off.”

  “It cert—”

  “Okay, I get the idea.” I smiled, shook my head. “Jesus, you are off-the-scale irritating.”

  It was good to be talking to him again, though, even if he was giving me the man-of-mystery routine. At the lockers, I asked something else. “How come you’ve not been in school?”

  “There were other things I preferred to do.”

  He made it sound so reasonable I couldn’t help laughing.

  “Why d’you ask?” he said, giving me a sidelong look.

  “Oh, no reason. Just…nothing.” It was a near thing, but I stopped myself from saying I was pleased to see him again. From letting him know I’d missed him.

  —

  “Three days earlier, you wanted him to stop bothering you,” DI Ryan says. “What changed?”

  “I don’t know.”

  That’s not true, though. What I mean is, I don’t know how to explain it.

  I must try, much as I’d rather be anywhere else right now than sitting here, answering these questions. For her sake and for mine, I must try to answer because—in different ways, for different reasons—DI Ryan and I both need to make sense of what happened between me and Uman. Also, I have to be clear about it for Uman’s sake. The police persist in regarding him as a perpetrator and me as a victim; the manipulator and the manipulated.

  I can’t let them think that’s how it was.

  With a shrug, I say, “I guess I didn’t realize I liked him until I thought he was gone.” I study DI Ryan’s face. She has pouches of pale flesh beneath her eyes. I hadn’t noticed them before. “Does that make sense?” I ask her.

  She nods. “Yes,” she says quietly. “Yes, it does.”

  During his absence that week, I tell her, the normality of my life—at school, at home, with my friends—was duller than ever. I missed the very thing I’d thought I wanted him to tone down: his oddness. I like oddness. Used to, anyway. But as I’ve grown up, I’ve become more and more conventional—worried about fitting in, increasingly self-conscious about drawing attention to myself by the way I behave, how I speak, the things I do, the clothes I wear, the—

  Mum interrupts at this point to ask in what way my wardrobe—that’s what she calls it, my “wardrobe”—can be considered conventional.

  “And what about your earrings?” Mum asks.

  She doesn’t like my homemade jewelry. My “junk,” she calls it. She’s never forgiven me for sneaking off to get a third piercing in each ear when she’d drawn the line at two.

  “Is that it?” I say, rounding on her. “I accessorize the tabs from drink cans, wear purple Docs and a fake pilot’s jacket that’s too big for me, and suddenly I’m Lady Gaga?”

  “Lor, I’m just—”

  DI Ryan cuts in. “Gloria, Mrs. Ellis. Please.”

  I slouch back in my seat. Fold my arms.

  “You were saying,” DI Ryan continues, after giving me a moment to calm down.

  I consider not bothering to respond. In the end, I do. It can’t sound all that coherent but I try to explain that I envied Uman for breaking out of the constraints that life places on us. For being how he chose to be and not giving a damn what anyone thought of him.

  That meeting Uman had made me see just how predictable I’d become.

  QUESTION 5: What d’you mean, “How things were at home”?

  I planned to follow Uman after school again on Friday—this time, without Tierney. The curiosity to see where he lived—to fill in some of the blanks about him—was eating me up. I’d be way more subtle about tailing him, for sure. Clandestine, that’s the word. Last period on a blue-week Friday is Science; Uman was in honors, same as me, so it would be easy enough to keep tabs on him as we filed out at the end, and then—

  Only, Uman didn’t turn up for the lesson. Back in school after missing three days and he was already cutting another class.

  I felt like he’d cut me. As if he’d somehow known what I was planning to do and had left early to make sure I didn’t. And now I wouldn’t see him again till Monday. If he bothered to come to school, that was. I sat through Science with a scowl on my face, barely taking in a thing.

  “Uman Padeem was an itch you had to scratch?” DI Ryan suggests.

  I wouldn’t have chosen those words, but it pretty much sums up how I felt back then.

  Anyway, she doesn’t want to talk about that anymore. She’d like to move things forward. Cut to the chase. The day I went missing, she means. But I’m not there yet. I tell DI Ryan she needs to know how things were at home if she wants the full picture of my disappearance.

  She glances at Mum then back at me. “What d’you mean, ‘How things were at home’?”

  —

  I begin with the story of how my parents met. DI Ryan interrupts, says this doesn’t have any bearing on…but I tell her it does. Reluctantly, she lets me continue.

  California, 1993. Dad was twenty-seven, Mum was twenty-three.

  Dad, having been in a not-very-successful band in the UK, had set off to America to try to make it in the music business. He ended up in San Francisco as a session musician. Meanwhile, Mum had realized she wasn’t cut out fo
r a career in medicine and quit her training to go traveling. She’d been on the road nearly a year when she found herself living in a San Francisco youth hostel and waitressing at a diner. The diner where my dad and other musicians liked to hang out.

  So Kev met Liz over a burger and fries and a bottle of Bud.

  Mum watches me with a curious expression, like she’s never heard this tale before. Or not told it herself a hundred times.

  When Kev just happened to have a spare ticket for a Van Morrison gig, Liz just happened to be off shift that night. If only we could time-travel back to the Mystic Theatre, Petaluma, California, on 12 December 1993, we’d witness their first date, first dance, first kiss. They’ve always disagreed over whether Van Morrison sang “Gloria” at that gig. Dad swears he did, Mum insists he didn’t. But they do agree that they both loved—love—the song. Enough to name their only daughter after it.

  They returned to England, together, six months later, in the summer of ’94.

  One year after that, they were married. One year after that, they had my brother, Ivan.

  “Van Morrison’s middle name,” I tell DI Ryan. “It’s where the ‘Van’ comes from.”

  By then Mum had retrained as a secretary, and Dad—his thirtieth birthday looming, weighed down by fatherhood and his continued failure to “break through” as a singer-songwriter—had finally drawn a thick line through his life as a musician and was completing an accountancy course.

  “God, you make it sound so black-and-white,” Mum says.

  I look at her. Then, to DI Ryan, “Three years and four months after Ivan was born, they had me. Gloria. G-L-O-R-I-A. They had their two-point-zero children. Their mortgage. Their safe, steady jobs.” I realize, as I’m saying it, how horrible I must sound.

  “Gloria, sorry, but what does all this have to do with how things were at home?”

  She doesn’t get it. She doesn’t get it at all.

  “Excuse me.” This is Mum. She says she needs the bathroom. As Mum bustles out of the interview suite, DI Ryan pauses the recording.