Next time I look at the clock it’s 4:21, and I’m standing over a mound of rubbish. My heart is beating fast, and I know I’m not going to get to sleep, but I also know I’ve finished. I shove most of the loose bits on to the board and push the whole thing back under my bed. A few bricks, figurines, shreds of cardboard and pieces of broken plastic are still strewn over the floor. One by one, leaving no evidence, I pick them up and dump them in the bin.
As I pull the sheet over me and feel the coolness of the pillow against my cheek, it feels good to know the smashed-up town is right underneath me. I’m pleased I’ve dealt with it. I just have to get it bagged and into the outside bin before Mum finds the mess and starts asking questions.
I watch the flashing dots on my clock, and decide that I’ll wait for 4:44. That will be a good switchover to see, then I’ll be able to sleep.
The 4 on digital clocks isn’t really a proper 4 at all. It’s an upside-down ‘h’. Whoever convinced everyone this could count as a 4 was very clever.
Part Two
I take my usual route to school and call on David, holding my football prominently under one arm as he comes to the door. I see him clock it, but he doesn’t comment.
I tell him I climbed in and got it myself. He just shrugs.
‘You won’t believe what’s in there,’ I say.
He doesn’t answer, so I let the silence hang. I can see he still wants to act indifferent, but I know I’ve aroused his curiosity.
‘What?’ he says, after a long pause.
‘A house,’ I say. ‘The weirdest house I’ve ever seen.’
We’re kicking my ball along the street, taking turns, but now I pick it up. I want his full attention.
‘Weird how?’ he says.
‘Smashed up. Demolished.’
‘What’s so weird about that?’
‘The feel of it. There are clothes everywhere, and furniture still inside, and books, as if people are still living there. Except it’s totally flattened.’
‘And?’
‘And what?’
‘I thought you said it was weird.’
‘That is weird. You don’t think it’s weird?’
He shrugs. ‘They have to do it.’
‘Who has to do what?’
‘The army. Imagine how cool that is. Just flattening a house. Imagine being the driver. Dooosh!’ He barges into me for emphasis, almost knocking me over, as if he’s the bulldozer and I’m the house.
I barge back, but he jabs out his arm and gets me in the bicep with an elbow. I don’t rub it, or give away that he’s hurt me. A second later, despite intending to keep quiet about it, despite knowing I shouldn’t, I hear myself tell him that I found a tunnel.
‘A tunnel?’
‘Yeah, but you mustn’t tell anyone.’
‘What kind of tunnel?’
‘There was just a hole in the ground, and when I went down to see what it was I found a tunnel, going under The Wall.’
He stops walking and fixes me with a suspicious stare.
‘A tunnel! And you went down it?’
I know I’ll be in dire trouble if any adult finds out what I did, but I can feel my secret wanting to be told in the way an ice cream wants to be eaten. David is the closest thing I have to a best friend in Amarias. If I can’t tell him, I can’t tell anyone. But immediately, seeing the horrified look on his face, I sense that I’ve miscalculated.
I imagine myself telling him about the girl on the other side, and how she saved me, but I couldn’t do anything to help her. I imagine describing the tiny home she lives in; her request for food and her skinny arms and proud, sad eyes. I imagine trying to explain the guilt that needles into me every time I think of her, and it is somehow obvious that he’ll never understand what I want him to understand, and he’ll never keep my story quiet. He’s lived in Amarias all his life. His parents were among the town’s pioneers. David, I know, never doubts for a moment that Amarias is the place it pretends to be. My uncertainty, to him, would be incomprehensible, subversive, disgusting.
I realise at once that I have to stop talking before giving anything else away. In fact, I have to think of a way to unsay what I’ve already said. I force out a laugh and punch him on the arm. ‘You believed me!’
For a moment, the wary glint stays in his eye, then he punches me back. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Yes, you did.’
‘Well, it’s possible,’ he says. ‘I bet there are tunnels. They’ll do anything to blow us up. They’re crazy.’ He reaches out and pulls the ball from under my arm, bouncing it as he talks. ‘Sometimes I look at the soldiers,’ he goes on, ‘and I can’t wait.’
‘For what?’
‘Until it’s our turn. Can you imagine what that’s going to feel like? Wearing the uniform. Carrying a gun. Going over to the other side and having all those people, everywhere, scared of you, doing everything you tell them.’
I turn away. I can’t imagine. Even trying at that moment to picture it, I can’t make it seem real or plausible. The first face that comes to mind is the girl. As an image begins to form in my mind of her at the point of a gun – at the point of my gun – David banishes it with his squeaky, excited voice. ‘And if anyone crosses you or messes you around . . .’ He tosses me the football, lifts an imaginary rifle to his shoulder and fires three invisible rounds. ‘DOOF! DOOF! DOOF!’
His eyes are scary, now. Alight with enthusiasm.
‘It’s the best army in the world,’ he says. ‘And in a few years we’re going to be in it. You know how lucky we are?’
I can’t think of an answer, so I just stretch out an arm and shove him in the chest, pushing him into a wall. I run off, laughing a forced laugh, knowing he’ll chase me, knowing he’s faster and rougher, and will have me on the ground in no time. His retaliation is bound to double what I did to him, but I don’t care. I just keep running and laughing.
All morning, I struggle to concentrate. Every page I look at seems to morph into the image David has conjured up, of me in uniform, holding a gun to that girl’s head. When I try to banish this vision, another pops up to replace it, of the boys who chased me, and what they would have done if they’d found me behind the motorbike. I imagine them laughing at my cowering body, kicking the bike over, then setting to work on me. When I try to shut off this sickening avenue of thought, my brain just takes me back to the girl, and the look of sudden fear on her face as she turned away, without even a goodbye.
I gobble my lunch as fast as I can, forcing myself to think of anything other than the girl, struggling, as I have done all morning, to get my thoughts back to my own life, to my own world on this side of The Wall. As soon as the food is inside me, I hurry to the playground and force my way into a game of football, chasing the ball frantically wherever it goes, not waiting for a pass, or picking a position, but just running as hard and fast as I can, using the game as a way to obliterate the poisonous thoughts that have invaded my head. I’m usually timid in the tackle but in this game I feel no fear, and slide in on people, taking pleasure in the crunch of their legs against mine as I compete for the ball.
I begin to sense people looking at me strangely. I see a gaggle of boys at the far end of the pitch muttering to one another and staring in my direction, but I don’t stop. For the first time since going into the tunnel, the knot of tension inside me feels as if it is loosening. The other boys in the game, usually my sort-of friends, today seem distant, unimportant, not entirely real.
When I score a goal, barging between two defenders and whacking a shot into the bottom right-hand corner, I run the whole length of the pitch as a celebration, but no one on my team joins in. If anything, they shrink away from me, but I don’t mind, and after kick-off I just redouble my efforts, running even faster after the ball, tackling even harder, until I become aware that my heart and legs are screaming at me to stop, and my stomach is tightening, moments away from throwing up.
I stop, walk to the sideline, and sit on the ground. Nobo
dy comes with me or asks if I’m OK.
While my nausea subsides I watch the football, a little dizzily. The other boys seem further away than ever, their shouts muffled and hollow, their excitement at the game strange and not quite comprehensible.
As I begin to feel more normal, a wayward shot flies out of nowhere, straight towards my face. The only way to avoid a broken nose is to flatten myself against the tarmac, which I do just in time to feel the ball skim millimetres above my hair. When I sit up again, the boy who kicked it is staring at me, smirking. Several other boys have similar expressions on their faces, and I realise this wasn’t an accident at all, but a well-aimed missile. I look away, pretending not to have noticed. I decide to give myself another minute or two before I leave, so they won’t think they got me.
Just as I’m getting ready to stand, David appears with his friend Seth, a chubby boy with a droopy bottom lip which always glistens with saliva. Seth hates me. They stand so close I have to crane my neck to see their faces.
‘Seth wants to hear about the tunnel,’ says David.
I blink into the sunlight, which is forming a shimmering halo above their heads. ‘What tunnel?’
‘The tunnel you found in the building site.’
I stare at David, fixing my mouth into a rigid, secretive slot. ‘What are you talking about?’
The two boys gaze at me for a few seconds, then, as if to some invisible cue, they burst out laughing and walk away.
I’ve told David too much. I can’t trust him.
A hand on my shoulder sends my body lurching upwards. My throat emits a strangled gasp that is almost a scream. Half my face is numb.
For an instant, my brain scrabbles and flails, not understanding where I am or what is happening. A person is standing over me, a woman, her brow creased with an anxious frown. It’s my mother. This place, all around me, is not where I was a moment earlier.
I’m in my room. I’m at my desk. In front of me is my homework. I must have fallen asleep with my head on an exercise book.
‘Dinner’s ready,’ says Mum. ‘I’ve been calling and calling.’
‘Sorry,’ I say, the word emerging as a dry croak.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You look awful.’
‘I . . . I think I had a bad dream.’
‘What was it?’
‘Nothing. I don’t know. It’s gone.’
‘Come and eat.’
‘OK.’
She tries to help me out of my chair, but I shrug her off.
‘I’ll come in a minute.’
‘OK. But quickly. And wash your hands. It’s getting cold.’
‘I’ll come,’ I snap. ‘Just give me a minute.’
She retreats, leaving the door half open behind her. I close my eyes again, groping after the receding threads of my nightmare. I was in the tunnel again, but it was wet at the bottom, a layer of water thinly covering everything, but it wasn’t cold, and it was OK to be crawling there, until I notice the smell, and become aware that the liquid under my hands and legs is more viscous than water. I lift a hand and turn it over, but can’t see anything until a trapdoor opens above me, and a shaft of light shines down. My palms, fingers and wrists are red. Then something grabs my shoulder, and I spin round, knowing it’s the hand of the boy who spat on me, knowing he’ll be holding a gun, but he vanishes before he appears, and the tunnel suddenly isn’t the tunnel, and the hand is the hand of my mother, waking me up to call me for dinner.
Mum and Liev watch me wordlessly as I walk into the dining room. It’s at times like this that I most miss having a sibling, these moments when there are two sets of eyes on you, watching everything you do, analysing every twitch of your face, with no one else to divert or distract them.
Most of the other families in Amarias are huge. If Dad hadn’t been shot, I know I’d have brothers and sisters. It sometimes seems as if he isn’t the only person missing from the family, as if they killed more than just my father.
I sometimes wonder if there’s something wrong with Liev, and sense that the smallness of our family is part of the reason people are suspicious of us. It isn’t normal, round here, to have just one child.
If Liev did have a proper son – one who was really his – I know he’d treat him differently. The idea of a mini-Liev in the house, who’d believe what Liev said and would want to be like him when he grew up, makes me want to puke. Better no brother at all than one like that. Except, perhaps, at times like this, when there’s nothing I want more than for there to be another human being in the room, doing something, anything, to get those four beady eyes turned away from me.
‘I made your favourite,’ says Mum, as soon as Liev has finished the blessing. ‘Roast chicken.’
‘Thanks,’ I mutter.
‘I thought – after what happened yesterday . . .’
‘After what you did,’ interrupts Liev.
‘I just thought,’ Mum carries on, trying to pretend Liev hasn’t spoken, ‘you’ve had a nasty fright, and you deserve a treat.’
I nod. I’m not going to thank her twice.
‘Your mother’s too nice,’ says Liev. ‘You don’t deserve her.’
‘And I deserve you?’ I think, but hold it in. The truth is, I don’t deserve Liev, and neither does Mum. He worked his way into the family without anyone noticing what he was doing, and now he’s in charge.
Mum was pretty crazy after Dad died. She tried to hold herself together, but for months she seemed like a pane of glass riddled with cracks that was still somehow sitting there in the frame. You couldn’t look at her without thinking the slightest tap would shatter her into a thousand pieces. I tried to help, but I felt pretty shaky myself, and you couldn’t speak to her for longer than a minute without her lips beginning to tremble and her eyes glazing over. When I had the choice, I often just tried to keep out of her way.
That’s when Liev started appearing. At first it was a relief. Mum needed sympathy when she went quiet, and she needed someone to act as if they were listening when her mood shifted and she started to talk. Even when she was saying the same thing for the hundredth time, Liev never seemed bored or impatient or eager to leave. Before long, he was with us every evening. It felt strange that he was religious, but religion takes up a lot of time, and Mum seemed to like that – having days, weeks and months punctuated by rituals that Liev gradually sneaked into our routine. Mum was lost, and he was like a compass, always pointing north, always leading her in one direction.
For a while, I was grateful to him. I wanted to be kind, I wanted to look after her, but I couldn’t do it. I was too angry and upset to have anything to spare for anyone else. Liev was tender with her in the way I wished I could have been. She was a fragile object I didn’t trust myself to carry, and I was pleased to be able to hand her over to someone else.
He’s still gentle with her now, still treats her as if the slightest upset might break her, except these days the thing he’s usually trying to protect her from is me. He thinks I’m selfish and inconsiderate, and he never stops trying to squeeze between us and police the way I talk to her. If he wasn’t around everything would be fine, but he just can’t resist stepping in and trying to make everything fit his stupid rules.
If I’d resisted him from the start, I might have been able to keep him at bay, but by the time I realised what he was up to – that he was working his way in for good, and he was going to change everything and never leave – it was too late. I still remember the moment when I realised what was going to happen, and that he had beaten me.
I was only nine when he first started visiting, and was always desperate for someone to play board games with me. There were weekends when we sat at the dining table for whole afternoons, rolling dice and moving counters, while Mum drifted around, keeping her distance and encouraging us to ‘bond’. It felt good to have someone else in the house other than just me and Mum. He was someone to hide behind, someone to handle her mood sw
ings, someone to turn us round and make us look forwards rather than backwards.
He tried his best to be nice to me, and I tried to like him, but the day when he suggested a ‘family outing’, I realised for the first time what he was trying to do. He was all smiles when he asked me where I wanted to go, and Mum was right there, too, grinning down at me, and I saw, in a flash, that they were both in on it – they were working together – lining up a replacement father.
I stood there, speechless, overwhelmed by the horror of this idea – by the idea that anyone might think they could do that, let alone this old, bearded, dreary stranger – while they gazed at me, waiting to hear my choice of outing. I opted for the swimming pool, not because I like swimming, but because I thought it was the best choice to expose the ridiculous gulf between Liev and my dad. I thought the sight of him in a pair of trunks might wake my mother up and force her to see what she was doing.
When he walked out of his cubicle, tiptoeing on the wet tiles as if he didn’t want them to touch his feet, I thought for a moment my plan might work. I already knew he was no athlete, but the way he looked in his old-fashioned trunks (which were not much bigger than a pair of women’s knickers) was creepier than I had dared imagine. His body was fat-but-thin, skinny and also saggy, with flesh the colour and texture of dough, so soft it looked as if a firm poke would leave a lasting dent. And even his toes were hairy.
‘So, let’s swim!’ he said, rubbing his hands together, struggling to act as if the outing was anything other than a grim duty. He didn’t seem to have any idea of how awful he looked.
Mum didn’t react to the sight of him in the way I’d hoped. She somehow stifled her instinctive response, which must have been to run screaming from the building, and didn’t even flinch when we emerged from the changing rooms. Perhaps this was tact; perhaps she’d seen it all before. This wasn’t a thought I wanted to dwell on.
The Wall Page 6