by Skuse, C. J.
“Jackson?” I say. “I’m Jody.”
He looks at me, then snaps his head to look back down at the water. “Where. Am. I?”
“Nuffing-on-the-Wold.”
“Where the hell is that?” He rolls the empty vodka bottle along the wall next to him.
“Somerset. In England. Y-y-you did a gig last night, at the Cardiff Arena. You were amazing . . . from what I saw.”
“Where’d Cardiff Arena go?”
“It’s . . . in Cardiff.”
“Where’d Cardiff go?!”
“Um, why don’t you come back off the bridge and we can talk.”
“No.” He bangs his fist down on the stone wall with every syllable. “I don’t know where I am, I don’t know what I’m doing here, why I’m not on the bus, I should be on the bus. . . .”
“The tour bus?”
He sniffs. He’s crying! Then he stops crying and shouts. “Where’s the goddamn bus?!”
I step forward. “Please, just come back off there and —”
“No, get away from me.”
“I’ll take you back to Cardiff, or you could give me Frank’s number. . . .”
“No, Jesus, Grohman’ll kill me!” He’s laughing now. “I can’t go back. We should be in Venice . . . no, Vienna, Verona. Some ‘V’ place.”
“But you just said you wanted to go back. . . .”
“No, no, no, no, no, no, I can’t go back, I can’t go back.”
“OK, OK, so . . . what can I do, then?”
“I don’t know. I can’t go back. Grohman’ll kill me.”
“He’s not going to kill you. I think the media or your fans would have something to say about that. Or the press. He can’t go around killing his —”
“You don’t know Grohman.”
I take another step toward him. I hold the key out by its string. “You dropped this.”
He snaps his head around. His eyes widen. “Gimme that!” I move toward him until the key is within his reach and he snatches it back. “Jesus,” he mutters as he puts the black string back over his neck and looks down at the key. He kisses it.
“I’m sorry I’ve put you through all this,” I tell him. He’s still kissing the key. “It’s just . . . last night, after the show, you came backstage, and I met you. I didn’t mean to kidnap you. I saw your manager talking to you. You looked really sad. You must have thought I had a knife but . . .”
“I don’t remember anything!” Jackson shouts. He draws his knees up to his chest so he is in an even more wobbly rocking position on the edge of the bridge. I can’t catch my breath. He chants through chattering teeth, “I don’t know where I am, I don’t know how I got here, I don’t know where my blackberries are. . . .”
“You have more than one BlackBerry? They must have been in your jacket or jeans.”
“And where are they?”
“You threw them off the Severn Bridge.”
“What? When?”
“Last night. Coming back from Cardiff.”
“Last night when you were kidnapping me?”
“Well, yeah . . .”
“And why would I do that?” His face is wild. He grips the hair on both sides of his head so he’s not holding on to the bridge at all now. “Why would I throw all my clothes over a bridge, huh?”
“You don’t remember?”
“Of course I don’t remember, that’s why I’m asking you, you frickin’ moron!”
I stutter. “I-I don’t know why you did it, you just did it. You kept screaming that something was on you and you had to get it off.”
He stops, turns back to the river. “Yeah . . . I do that sometimes.”
“Why do you do that?” He twizzles the bottle. “You weren’t . . . on something, were you?”
“I’ve forgotten what it’s like not to be on something.” He shoots me a look. “You think I put on shows like that ’cause I get such a natural kick out of it? I’m tired, OK? I’m tired of going to every corner of the globe and the only thing that changes is the wallpaper in my hotel room. Tour bus, hotel, venue, tour bus, hotel, venue, tour bus, hotel, venue. Round and round we go. If I wasn’t tweaked every night, d’you think I’d put up with that shit? Go to this bridge place and get my stuff.” He ushers me away like I’m a moth flapping around his halo.
“No,” I say.
His face lurches toward me. “You will or I’ll —”
“I can’t get your clothes back. They’re gone. Floating in the Bristol Channel by now. I know this must be really difficult for you to understand and I really am sorry.”
He flings the bottle down into the water. I don’t hear it splash below cos my heart’s banging too much in my ears. “What do you care, you . . . kidnapper.” He points at the water. His finger shakes. “That’s what my life is now. That’s all I’m good for.” He sniffs. “Grohman won’t let me get away — I’m his ‘investment.’” He points his hard white finger at me. “He knows people. He knows people who’ll find me and kill me. He’s a complete nut ball.”
“You’re not exactly in a position to talk,” I say quietly, but he doesn’t hear.
“Bet the media are all over this. I’m one of their favorite targets.” He throws me a look. “The paparazzi are after me. Always. There’ll be pictures, photos.”
“I’m sorry I’ve put you through this. I’d banged my head. I really wasn’t thinking straight. I just wanted to spend some time with you. I thought it would be, I don’t know, fun . . . or something.”
“FUN? Do you know what you’ve done? Who the HELL do you think you ARE?”
“I’m just . . . a fan.”
“Fan? Don’t talk to me about fans! Stupid bitches. I see them outside the shows — fat, ugly lesbians, kidding themselves they’re hot for me . . .”
“What? You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“. . . thinking if they put on enough eyeliner I’ll see them in the crowd and I’ll be hot for them. ‘Oh, Jackson, I’m a lost soul, too.’ Bullshit. Talking to me like they know me from way back, just ’cause they once read a book I’d read. Whoop-de-fuckin’-do . . .”
Tears drop down my cheeks. His voice rings around my head like a roulette ball. I’m still, like a sponge, sucking in every insult for every fan who’s ever waited all day or all night in the cold. Who’s saved up all their pocket money just to buy his album. Who’s kissed his posters at night. Who’s run away from home because of one of his concerts. He keeps on going, hammer blow by hammer blow, smashing down the perfect little house of love we’ve all built.
“. . . just because they think that if they buy that key ring or that Regulators T-shirt, then they’ve got a little piece of Jackson to show off to all their friends. Just ’cause ya ain’t got boyfriends, you buy into our crap thinking that somehow we’re your boyfriends.”
I bite my lip to stop the sob escaping but it doesn’t help. I’m spluttering all over the place. “Y-you do care about the fans,” I say, tasting salt water on my lip and licking it away. “You g-gave me my rock back. Last night. At the concert. You told off th-that security guy.”
“What?”
“I lost my rock. You g-gave it back and you shouted at a security guy who stood on my —”
“I probably just wanted to shout at a security guy, that’s all. I hate those guys. And before you say ‘If it wasn’t for us fans’ and gimme all that shit, let me tell you something, Josie —”
“Jody,” I squeak, but he doesn’t hear.
“— there’ll always be stupid fan girls, buying all the crap we put out, putting up our posters. Listening to our records, ’cause ya know what?” He glares at me. I don’t even recognize him anymore. He is wild-eyed and sour. He is still the madman. He’s just ditched his straitjacket.
“You’re all the same. Sheep. Fat sheep, too.” He looks at me, down to my feet, and up to my face and laughs evilly like a Bond villain. “And I’ve been over feeding you bitches for too fucking long.”
My mouth hangs open.
My sponge has just been squeezed out. I don’t think. I don’t even breathe. I take one step toward him and push him off the bridge.
“I don’t want any more chemo. Enough enough enough. It just makes me even more tired and even more old,” Grandad once told me. He’d just tipped his tea tray onto the carpet and I was cleaning it up. “I’m going out with a bang, Jody. I’m taking a different road out of here.”
My grandad hated being a burden on us as he got weaker. He wasn’t meant to be weak. Inside, he was a fireball of energy and laughter — outside he was shrinking, drying up. Turning to dust. After his diagnosis, the color started running out of our house. When he’d gone, he’d pulled the plug right out. My grandad liked The Regulators. He liked the fact that their The Punk, The Priest . . . album was a concept album and told the story, in songs, of four men who escape Heaven in order to enter Hell. I used to show him my magazines, the pictures of Jackson taking his trash out or running away from hordes of screaming girls.
“They can’t leave them alone for a bloody second, can they?” I remember him saying, as he went on this long tirade about the paparazzi and their treatment of celebrities. “It’s no bloody wonder they want to kill themselves, some of them. It’s no bloody wonder that poor princess got hounded to her death. And poor Michael Jackson and all his problems. It’s not right, it’s not bloody right. Who’s looking after these people for God’s sake?”
“You were supposed to be talking him out of jumping, not pushing him in!” Mac shouts as he and Alfie thunder up the bridge to where I’m standing.
“I just . . . saw red. He called me fat. He said . . .” Mac runs to the side of the bridge and cranes his neck over. I can’t go near, I can just hear the splashing about and shouting and ducks flapping below. I’m welded to the spot. “Is he dead?”
“Course he’s not dead. But he’s going to freeze to death in there. Well, go on.”
I force my legs into action and run past him down the bridge and down again, sliding along the frozen mud on the bank and through the long reeds until I feel the coldest sensation on my legs and I’m in the water.
“I’m drowning, I’m d-d-drowning!” Jackson screams. He’s in the middle, thrashing around, gasping and shouting and swearing and scared, though he must be able to feel the bottom with his feet. I wade out to him, not daring to slow down though every single nerve in my body is begging me to stop and get used to the icy water before I move forward. But I don’t. I wade on out and throw both arms around him, making him lose his footing so I can pull him, awkwardly, as he thrashes around in my arms, toward the bank.
We both slump down onto the mud. “Bloody hell,” I gasp as Jackson lies shivering and crying beside me. Within seconds I hear footsteps and Mac’s there, coat off, wrapping it around Jackson from the front.
“It’s OK, it’s OK,” he says, “come on, we’ll get you inside and get you warm.” He lifts Jackson to his feet, bundles him tightly in the coat, and guides him up the bank, leaving me lying there, like a rat in the shallows. Breaths pump out of me, and every one hurts. This just isn’t Jackson. This just isn’t what he’s like. This isn’t the man I fell in love with. My kindred thingy. This isn’t the man who understands me. This is the celebrity my grandad was talking about. Driven up the wall by fame.
“No bloody wonder they want to kill themselves. Who’s looking after them?”
That’s why Jackson said all that horrible stuff about the fans. He’s sick of being famous. He’s sick of the celebrity. He’s sick. And then, more abruptly than my head knows how to handle, the facts wash up and begin piecing themselves together.
I have to help him. I have to look after him. That’s what Grandad meant. That’s what “Don’t Dream It, Be It” means. I couldn’t help Grandad stay alive, but I can help Jackson!
I lie there, having my eureka moment for a bit, then slowly get to my feet and trudge up the bank, soaking and weighed down by my cold, soggy clothes. But on the inside, I’m warm with thoughts of my new project: Project Jackson. Project Celebrity Cold Turkey. And I know what I have to do. I have to get him back to my house, that’s the first thing. Then I can look after him. I can bring him back to who he really is. But when I reach the top of the bank on the bridleway, Mac is alone. There’s no sign of Jackson. There’s a little movement in the hedge and Alfie returns from taking a wee.
“Where . . . is . . . he?” I pant. “Where’s Jackson?” Mac nods toward the back of the library. Nobody is there, just some recycling bins and a red dumpster stuffed full of cardboard and shredded paper.
“Where?” I shiver, my eyes darting around the place. “Oh God, we’ve lost him again, haven’t we? For God’s sake.”
Mac nods toward a recycling bin, a tall upright green one with a lid. He mouths, “In there.”
I look at the bin. I crouch down beside it. “Jackson?” Knock-knock.
“Go away,” comes an echoey, juddering sob. I can hear a clacking, too — his teeth.
“What’s he doing?” I mouth to Mac. I’m juddering with cold, too.
“He saw Marge going into the back of the library. He thought she was the paparazzi.”
“T-t-t-the w-w-w-what?” I shiver. “Why would he think that?”
“Because he’s a paranoid wreck. He’s convinced he’s being watched.”
“Marge uses a walker, doesn’t she?” Mac just stands there, looking cold without his coat on. “Right,” I say, flicking the brake up on the bin and going behind it to tip it onto its wheel. There’s a heavy thud inside and I nearly tip the whole thing over but Mac joins me and takes some of the strain and we push it along together.
“The police station’ll be open by now. The town’s just coming to life,” heaves Mac. “We’ll drop him off on the doorstep and leg it.”
“I’m not dropping him anywhere. I’m taking him home.”
Mac stops. “No you’re not,” and pulls the bin away from me.
“I bloody am,” I say, pulling it back.
“No way,” he says, tugging it back again. “Alfie, come on, Alf . . .”
I tug again hard and this time I break away with the bin and Mac stands to the side, grabbing Alfie’s leash up off the ground. “I’m going home and I’m going to call the police. You don’t know what you’re doing, Jody. This has gone way far enough. I’m going to tell the police.”
I roll on with Jackson in the bin. “Do what you like.”
“You can’t keep him, Jody!” he shouts. A man walking a poodle stops along the bridleway on the other side of the bridge. Mac marches back up to me and whispers, “How are you going to get him past your mum and Halley? Dumbledore given you an invisibility cloak or something?”
An echoey sob comes from somewhere inside the bin. I keep rolling him on, taking the full strain of the sodden lump inside now. “I’ll come around and get my stuff later,” I call back.
“I don’t want anything more to do with this!” he calls out.
“Fine!” I call back.
“And I’m still calling the police!” he says louder. “You can’t look after yourself, Jody, let alone anyone else! Let alone someone like him!”
I don’t stop moving until I’ve reached the end of Chesil Lane and see the blue door of number 25 shining in the distance. I roll the bin along the rickety pavement, the wet hems of my cargoes slapping against the concrete, until we get to the alley at the side of the house. Oh stunning. Gravel. I roll along regardless, going as quickly as I can, even though the bin is making such a racket on the stones and Jackson is inside, juddering around like a sodden wet lump and sobbing like a toddler.
Our garage is at the back of the house, at the end of the garden. It’s the perfect place for Jackson. Grandad had a small lottery win a couple of years ago and had it converted into a drum room. He used to be a drummer in a band when he was younger, but had got out of the habit, so he said he was going to start drumming again. Then he got his diagnosis. Not only is it warm and secluded in the drum room, it’s also carpeted and
soundproofed. It’s like my very own Room of Requirement for a rude, drugged-up rock star — carpeted, soundproofed, and a million miles away from his former habits — and momentarily I’m optimistic. It’s also cluttered with boxes of Grandad’s things that Mum put out for the Goodwill pickup the night before his funeral, things I rescued. I’d come down in the wee small hours to steal some of them back and hidden them in the drum room. I didn’t want charity having all his stuff.
The front of the drum room is bricked up and a normal door has been put into the side wall. There’s a cat flap at the bottom of it that Grandad had put in for Winston when he got the mange and couldn’t come in the house anymore, but Winston ran off a few months after we moved in, which was, like, two years ago, and the cat-flap door’s gone creaky and stiff.
“Phew, right. OK,” I puff as I pull down the handle and push open the door, propping it open using the bin, while checking all around me for unwelcome faces. No one about, no one lurking in their backyards, four of which back right on to the gravel pathway that runs along the back of the house. I look for curtains moving in upstairs windows, body shapes behind glass, doors ajar, children playing, even cats roaming the wall tops. But no one and nothing is about. It’s still too early for most people to have surfaced. I keep watching, lining up the bin with the opening of the door and lifting the lid for Jackson to get out. I expect a flurry of violence as the lid opens. But there is nothing. I peer slowly inside the bin and Jackson is cowering.
“It’s all right,” I whisper. “No one’s around.”
“I can’t g-g-get out,” he says, a meek look on his face as it tilts up toward me.
“You have to. I can’t pull you out,” I bark. “Come on, quick, before someone comes.”
“I can’t. I d-d-don’t have . . . up-p-p-p-p-per body st-strength.”
Without another word I snap the lid of the bin shut, wheel it around so it faces the other way, kick the brake down, and push it over so Jackson comes tumbling out of it and rolls straight into the drum room like a moldy potato rolling down a chute. I pull the bin away and step inside the room, clicking the door shut quietly and hunkering down beneath the two small double-glazed windows at the top in case someone appears to see what the rumpus is. Jackson lies shivering in a ball, plastered with sodden strands of shredded paper from the bin.