He’s smiling now, lost in his story, and I kind of like it. Even though I don’t know what no time-traveller is or where in the Outside Ancient Egypt is. It don’t really matter none, ’cause it’s a story and it’s his.
‘I think he took me with him sometimes, too. Yeah, he did. I remember us playing this one concert with Mozart, right, and –’ He catches my eye and coughs, the story disappearing from his eyes. ‘I know it’s stupid. But it’s kind of the same as this, right? Like you’re Angus in real life. And I’m bringing you food …’
I nod, ’cause I know that stories can come to real life. I know it right now.
He shakes his head. ‘I can’t believe I just told you that. I’ve not thought about Angus since …’ His eyes flash with something dark, so quick that you might not see it if you weren’t used to seeing shadow. He sees me looking and forces out a smile, bringing out a pile of extra-skins he’s gone and got with the food. ‘I brought these. They are – were – my mum’s.’ He swallows.
He hands me some extra-skins for the legs and other things I can’t make out what they’re for. But he’s looking at me, so I nod at him thanks.
He keeps on looking, then seems to get real awkward, like he’s caught himself doing something he shouldn’t. He turns round and looks right to the door. I wonder if he’s gonna go marching back out again, so I shout out.
‘I’m not leaving,’ he calls over his shoulder. ‘Put them on so I can turn round again.’
I look at all the extra-skins in my hands. Put these on? My heart is beating real fast. I don’t fancy making myself look like I don’t know what I’m doing. He’s saying ‘put them on’ like it’s something I should know, and I don’t want him thinking I ain’t no girl of the Outside.
I try putting them on any way I can.
‘OK?’
I don’t say nothing, but I guess he thinks it’s OK, ’cause he turns round and looks at me.
And he laughs. It starts out all small, but it gets bigger and bigger.
My teeth want to jump up and bite him to teach him some manners, but I don’t.
How to be an Outside Person – number eight: Don’t bite people.
‘Are you serious?’ He must see that I’m mighty serious, as he quits his laughing soon enough. ‘They’re underpants, Ele. Not a hat.’
Well, if you ask me, the idea of putting on extra-skins and having different names for it all is stupid. I throw the ‘underpants’ right at him, hard as I can, and they land at his feet.
Ain’t no one need to be good at throwing underpants, anyway.
And he’s still laughing with those big, stupid eyes of his, so I pull myself under my hair and sink down into the floor.
I can’t believe I ever thought he’d look after me. Laughing at people ain’t looking after.
‘Are you seriously telling me you haven’t seen underpants before?’ He’s looking at me like he both wants an answer and he don’t, so I keep on being mad in silence.
He shakes his head of thoughts. ‘They’re for … you know, for your legs and stuff.’ And he takes up the pink underpants and he steps through the holes at the bottom, even though his feet are all big and he’s getting them dirty. He pulls the underpants up to the top so he’s trapped in them.
I look at him. I look at the underpants. And I realize I was right. He is stupid.
I close my eyes, my thoughts raging, ’cause it’s like being back Inside again. Here I am – an Outside Person Outside – and he don’t believe that I belong here neither.
He thinks it’s funny.
Ain’t no one allowed to laugh at me and tell me I’m wrong. I’m in the proof-finding business and I say that he’s wrong. I ain’t never seen no one looking like him in any book I ever read – not one of them.
It’s him that don’t belong here.
I curl up away from him.
He starts poking me in the back. His finger’s all stubby and wide, not like any of the Others poking me.
‘Ele? Come on. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh. But you did have pants on your head. You get that that’s funny, right?’
I scowl, and curl myself up tighter.
‘Ele? Come on. Talk to me. Tell me where you’re from.’
He pokes me again, but I don’t say nothing. He don’t neither. I can feel him fidgeting, though, tapping on his knees and trying to see my face in between my hair.
After a while, he starts being still. And I must be awful tired or something, as it don’t take long before I drift off to sleep.
Twenty-Five
‘She was always covered in paint. Mainly greens. Dad nearly had a fit when he came back one night and saw what she’d done to my bedroom wall. Ha! Trees again, of course. She was always painting trees.’
I hear him as I’m drifting in and out of sleep. He’s telling me things about himself. About things as they are. About someone called ‘Mum’. He’s telling me more and more about her as he’s talking, and moving closer to me, too. His voice sounds right nice and clears some of the badness out my head.
Trees.
‘I remember, this one time she’d tried painting this big tree from memory, but she’d started too big. All the branches were on and it looked like she’d need to throw out the whole canvas. But she didn’t – maybe ’cause they’re expensive. She just kept painting right off the canvas, right into the air. Huh. I’d forgotten about that …’
He don’t say nothing for a long time.
‘I don’t remember when it was that she stopped. I guess it wouldn’t have been too long before, you know … She wouldn’t have stopped lightly. But she did get bad. By the end I mean. I don’t know. Maybe I can’t remember.’
I hear him shuffling around like he’s poking something in something else. It’s mighty annoying.
‘That and … and I wasn’t there at the end. I’d gone to school – I was only eleven – and, when I came back, there were all these people in the house. And I saw Dad – saw the state he was in – but I still asked. I still made him say, “She died, Willow.” I remember he said it just like that. “She died”.’
Died. Zeb’s eyes going all wide. It rips up from my belly and starts flickering in front of my eyes. His hand stretching out towards mine. His blood.
I clutch myself real hard, and I guess the movement makes Willow remember just where he is, as he sniffs.
‘Agh, don’t know why I’m saying all this stuff, anyway.’
I stay on the floor, trying to push down that feeling like the sun has somehow got into my chest and is burning me up from inside to out.
‘Guess it’s all this junk. It does get you thinking, hey?’
I get up slowly, still hiding my face. And I sit like him, all creased up.
‘Why’d she die?’
I say it real quiet, using my People words.
I reckon he din hear me at first, as he don’t say nothing until: ‘Brain tumour.’
I nod, like I know exactly what that is. Willow watches me out of the corner of his eye, rubbing his nose on his sleeve.
How to be an Outside Person – number nine: Know someone who’s died.
‘Zeb died, too,’ I blurt out quick before I can stop myself. I lift my head up to look in his eyes. They’re all red round the edges.
‘Zeb?’ he says. ‘Someone you knew?’
I nod. I try to say the words, but they ain’t coming out right now. They’re all jumbled with Other.
And I start seeing it happen again. The gun coming down. His eyes looking at me wide. Looking and seeing me. Knowing it’s all my fault.
Willow puts his arm round me – all nervous like he ain’t never touched another person – but, as soon as his arm touches mine, I shove my head into his chest and pull him close, smell the Outside on his clothes, and it feels better somehow. Like Zeb’s back with me.
He stiffens up like a wall at first, but then starts moving his arm up and down my back in a way that’s real careful and nice. Then he starts loosening up a bit, e
ven though I can hear his heart busting at the seams through his chest.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says.
And it’s OK, ’cause he’s there. And that’s OK.
He starts speaking some more then – telling me all about himself and his life Outside like he ain’t never spoke to no one neither. It reminds me of the time Zeb stuffed a load of feed up into the tap and then turned it on to see what would happen. It was all still at first, but you could feel something building up and up, until finally all that water came whooshing out all at once and the feed was thrown right across the other side of the Tower.
Not that I’m thinking of Inside or nothing. It’s just all this ‘junk’, ain’t it? It gets you thinking.
He tells me about something called ‘music practice’ and ‘hanging out’. He tells me it’s all boring – all the things called ‘school’ and ‘chores’ – but it don’t sound boring to me. I don’t reckon I understand a lot of it, but it feels nice listening to him tell his stories. I have my ear pressed up on his chest and I can feel his voice inside my head like it’s my own.
I know so many words.
‘Hey, you want to see one of my mum’s paintings? There’s one in here somewhere.’
He don’t wait for me to say nothing. He gets himself up quick and dodges his way through all the stuff in the shed, cussing as he knocks things and sends them wobbling.
‘Here it is!’
He half pulls something flat out from behind a big brown box with doors. His eyes are dancing about like he’s right excited and also a bit pissed off that whatever a ‘painting’ is ain’t coming out quite as easy as he’d like.
I kneel up straighter, to watch him struggle. When he finally pulls it loose he takes a moment to look at it all to himself before he brings it over, dodging all the stuff in his way with the painting above his head like his own ceiling. He kicks at the stuff in his way like it all don’t matter.
He’s breathing hard when he gets over to me. He falls to his knees, twirling round the ‘painting’ so it’s looking at me and –
Green. So much green.
Trees, too, like nothing I never saw in the books. As big as me.
I shout out loud, leaning over to touch their leaves, but Willow pulls the painting away.
‘Er, best to just look, you know. Fingers and all.’
Looking is still the best. There are trees all big at the front and trees going back, too, like I’m sitting on a hill looking out through a window. I saw pictures of trees before in the books, but never as big as this. And it ain’t even that this painting is very good or real, like the trees in An Encyclopaedia of British Trees. These trees are all a rush of colour – colour rubbed on like it was done with fingers. And I look at all the greens and it’s like every leaf is inside me like a feeling.
‘Sycamore,’ I say, pointing at the tree in the corner. ‘Elm.’ And I’m looking at the one at the bottom, as I can’t tell if it’s a Birch or a baby Oak.
‘Birch,’ I say finally. And I point to the ones in the background. ‘Pine.’
‘Jeez, you know your trees.’
I sneak a peek at him and see that he’s looking mighty impressed, like he should.
I lift my chin and straighten up. ‘Willow,’ I say, pointing to the leaves hanging down in the corner.
His eyes go wide, and he moves in to look closer. ‘Willow …’ he whispers. ‘Huh. I never really thought of me being a tree.’
That’s ’cause he’s stupid, but I don’t say it out loud.
There’s something else in the bottom corner. A word: Ashley.
‘Ash,’ I say, pointing to a sprout just above the letters.
‘Ash? As in Ashley?’ Willow picks the painting up. ‘That was Mum’s name.’
Now, I don’t know why no one needs two names, but it don’t seem the time to ask.
‘You’re sure?’ he says, still looking at the little sprout on the painting. ‘You’re sure it’s an Ash?’
I don’t know if it is an Ash. And I don’t know whether I should be lying about something as important as that. But, when I see his smile when I nod, I reckon the lie was worth it.
Twenty-Six
By the time Willow leaves the shed, the sun is bleeding right out across the sky.
I watch from the window as its red trickles down the drain of the horizon, and I’m wondering if Willow is gone forever now, just like Zeb was when He took him out of the Tower.
Willow said he’d be back soon, though. And I think I believe him.
I’m thinking back on all the Outside words I learnt today, like underpants – which I managed to put on in the end like it weren’t nothing, like I was an underpant-wearing natural. Willow even said they looked better on me than they did on him, before going as red as an apple.
He’s a strange ’un, but I like him.
I drink another big gulp of water, trying to use my lips instead of my tongue this time, just like Willow does. I get some down my nice new ‘dress’, which is the same type of green as a Fir tree. The cold feels nice on my chest. I din realize I was getting so hot.
A shadow passes over my insides, making me feel awful funny. I sit down and drink some more water. I’ve been standing up too long, is all. I’ll just close my eyes for a bit, ’til Willow comes back, then I’ll take him on some adventures. We’ll go play with Mozart and fight Ogres in Ancient Egypt.
He’d like that. I know it.
Twenty-Seven
I’m remembering Him. I ain’t supposed to, and I don’t want to neither. But I can’t stop it.
He’s out of His extra-skins and lying on the floor all stretched out, like it’s His. I can smell Him in the back of my throat, all sweat and dirt. He has my head locked in His arm and I can feel the heat of His dirty ol’ armpit on the back of my neck.
It’s difficult to breathe proper, so I do it slowly, thinking it through. I watch the bones in my chest, each one like a finger, as they clench and unclench. In and out. I got this.
His breathing is slow, too. I’d think Him asleep if I couldn’t feel the muscles in His arm working to keep me held.
He don’t say nothing. I don’t make no sound neither.
We lie like this for hours, Him occasionally moving to scratch the tangles on His chest. Sometimes I need to swallow. I do it slow, but He feels it every time and makes it tighter.
Then – just like that – He lets go.
The air all rushes in at me and I’m trying not to cough it out. I roll over to my front and hide my face from Him.
I hear Him getting His extra-skins back on again. I hear Him walking over to that door. Then the beep.
He don’t say nothing as He leaves. The door slams.
I wake up all in darkness. I’d think I was dead if I weren’t feeling so much hot all over my skin, like I’m burning right up. I shove all the stuff off me, but it ain’t no use. I groan out loud, and look deep into the dark for something, ’cause I don’t know where I am, and all I can see is colour bubbling at the edges of shapes I don’t recognize, and I’m trying to shove all the stuff off me, but I already did, din I? I’m too hot, but it’s too dark to be sun, and I throw myself over to the water – waterwaterwater – and the ground hits me like His fist and I’m too far gone to be closing my legs. I scream out, thrash my arms about to ward Him off and they knock the water over.
I pull myself over to it on the floor, a puddle like a window right into another dark world, and I push my face in it. My tongue don’t wanna come out of my face – it’s so thick and dry. It don’t help. It don’t.
I cry out. Thrash. Try to breathe in. Can’t.
Ele, I hear. Ele.
And I think, Zeb, is that you?
It’s time. Time to escape.
Twenty-Eight
Voices. Voices are talking. And I’m on a cloud.
I’m dreaming about Jack – the one in the stories. I’m thinking of his beanstalk, how it grew from the ground. His own tree. It took him right up into the sky and in
to all those clouds. And I’m thinking that it’d be mighty hot up there, as there wouldn’t be no place to hide from the sun.
I’m up there. On a beanstalk. Mighty hot.
‘How long are we talking?’
‘Not long.’
‘How long?’
‘Two days, I think, but –’
‘Two days!’ Hissing. ‘Yer a fool, Will.’
Mumbling. ‘Come on, Dad. You didn’t even notice! If I hadn’t come –’
‘What if she’s listed as missing? There’d be all sorts around then – police, doctors, press. Nae. Ah won’t have it.’
‘She’s not missing! I told you. She’s just a lass from school who needs a place to stay –’
‘Aye, but that place isnae a shed, Will.’ Hands scratching through hair. ‘Why ye didnae tell me … Why haven’t ah seen her before if she goes tae yer school?’
A grumble. ‘She’s new. She’s not from here originally.’
‘Aye, well …’
There’s moving around me. Someone big is pacing up and down. The footsteps rumble me like Giants.
Giants. Giants.
I call out, but it all sounds wrong. Like moaning.
I ain’t scared. I ain’t.
‘Ele?’
Willow. Willow is here, I can smell him. I flail out, hold his arm. My clouds start spinning round and round.
I’m gonna fall.
Hands holding mine. They’ve got me.
‘Willow.’
They’ve got me.
‘Is she OK?’
‘She’s just got a cold. She just – she needs me to look after her, OK?’
‘Aye, well, I’ll go and get –’
Willow sighs. ‘I’ve got this, Dad! We don’t need you.’
Silence.
‘Ah see.’
‘Dad, I didn’t mean –’ Willow tries to leave, but I clutch him back to me.
Footsteps. Giant is leaving. Willow is fighting it off.
I open my eyes and everything is all blurry, but I see Willow there above me. He’s leaning over me like I’m Sleeping Beauty and he’s come to wake me up.
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