by Stef Penney
“How’s your hand now?”
She sounds abrupt.
“It’s okay.”
I stretch my right hand out on the table between us, fingers spread. “You going to do that trick with the knife?”
“No.”
“You can feel things again?”
“Yeah. Mostly.”
She puts her hand on mine. Her palm is warm and dry. I turn mine palm up, under it. The last time she touched me, I couldn’t feel anything.
65.
JJ
Today it’s Christo’s birthday, and we go to the big park that’s a bus ride away from our house. And Stella comes to visit, as it’s a Saturday. We pick her up from the train station. In the park there’s a lake, and they have pedalos, which aren’t exactly like boats but sort of. It’s a lovely day, although it’s pretty cold. Tomorrow the clocks go back.
Stella and I exchange school gossip. My new school isn’t too bad. If I haven’t made any real friends yet, at least I haven’t made any enemies, either. And there are so many different sorts of people there that I certainly don’t stand out. One boy, who can be a bit annoying, asked me why we are called Romanies. I said because we come from Rome. He looked quite impressed. I think he actually believed me. I said that because I thought he was going to take the piss, but afterward, it occurred to me that he had actually wanted to know. I feel a bit bad about it now. I’ll have to go and straighten him out this week.
“It sounds all right.”
“Yeah.”
Stella stares at the ground. We’re walking around the lake, while Mum and Christo tactfully stay behind, talking to the ducks.
She says, “I miss you.”
“Yeah? I mean, I miss you, too.”
My heart races. Does she really mean that?
“Thanks!”
She grins at me, but she’s blushing a little bit.
“No, I do!”
“Yeah, right. All those new girls . . .”
I push her gently, and she pretend staggers into the trees. I follow her, and there she kisses me, on the lips, where no one can see us, and her lips are cold and warm at the same time. I wasn’t sure whether she really wanted to be my girlfriend, but that, I guess, is evidence.
We persuade Mum to let us take Christo out in a pedalo as a special birthday treat. It’s the first time he’s been on a boat since we came back from France. Same for me. Mum refuses to get into one of those things— and anyway, someone has to look after his chair, and all our stuff. We get into the pedalo and push off. You can pedal quite hard, but it goes only very slowly, and it’s quite noisy, with lots of sloshing underneath. It’s hard work to get it to go in a straight line; both people in front—that is, me and Stella—have to pedal at exactly the same rate, which, it turns out, is really hard to do. And I keep turning around to check that Christo is okay and hasn’t fallen in, which doesn’t help. It’s a rubbish form of transport, when it comes down to it.
Being on the lake reminds me of the beautiful rowing boats that Mr. Lovell and I saw at the hospital lake, so elegant and inviting. The ones we didn’t go in. I really liked their names: VIOLET—TO CARRY SIX. CHRISSIE— TO CARRY THREE . . .
We narrowly avoid a collision in mid-pond with a father and daughter. Christo and the man’s daughter, who’s about five, shriek with delight. Stella is grinning. I look at her, wondering how that happened. She doesn’t look at me, but she looks happy, laughing and encouraging me to play chicken with the other boat, her cheeks faintly flushed with red.
I’m not paying attention.
“JJ . . . JJ! Stop! We’re going to hit the side!”
Stella is yelling at me. We’ve turned in a curve somehow. I’m not sure what happened. And then we do, indeed, ram into the bank. Not very hard or anything, because, like I said, it’s a rubbish form of transport. But with a bit of a jolt. “Sorry sorry sorry!” I yell, and look around at Christo, who is all right and laughing his head off, thinking, or choosing to think, we’ve done it on purpose.
“Again!” he shouts. It’s not very clear, but I know what he means, because I’ve heard it before.
“Again. Again!”
And so, because it’s his birthday, and he’s seven, and he isn’t dying— and because I feel like shouting—we do it again.