Outside

by Sarah Ann Juckes

  Ezra-Dad starts moving bumpily and I hold him tighter, his beard scratching at my arms.

  He coughs, and I feel the lump in his throat on my arms. I move them.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say.

  He grunts. ‘Where tae?’

  I grip him tight. The air is tickling at my toes. The floor seems an awful long way down. I keep watch for Dragons.

  I point to the shed. ‘There.’

  Ezra-Dad stops and bends down, picking up my sword that I dropped all that time ago. He throws it back into the shed. Inside is all the same stuff there was before, all shapes and things clumped together. Ezra-Dad tuts, muttering about it being Willow’s job to clean it up.

  I think back to when I first opened my eyes to find I was Outside, looking at all the stuff and not knowing what nothing was. Now I know those extra-skins are clothes, and what’s holding them are bin bags. The boxes at the back are wardrobes, drawers, chests. My sword – that’s just a broom. And my shield is the lid of a bin. And the picture of the trees still propped up in my corner – that’s a painting.

  Ezra-Dad drops my legs and his breath at the same time, holding on to the door frame like he’s worried he’s gonna fall over. I hop round the side of him, rubbing my feet where I landed. He don’t see me. All he sees is that painting, like he ain’t never seen no trees before neither.

  We look at it together.

  ‘Birch,’ I say, pointing. ‘Pine. Willow. Ash –’

  I don’t get to finish, though. He leaves suddenly, the door to the shed swinging back, so I have to run to catch it before it shuts.

  I don’t want to be trapped Inside all over again.

  ‘Wait!’ I say, as he marches towards the back door.

  For a second, I think he’s gonna keep walking away. But he stops. Sees me, his hands in his beard. He walks over and bends down, so I can climb up on to his back.

  He takes me down the path and into the kitchen and I’m careful not to accidentally strangle him again. I wait for him as he locks the door and puts the key back in the drawer.

  And then, just to prove I couldn’t be more of an Outside Person, I make him tea.

  He don’t say nothing, but he does sit down, hands halfway over the tabletop, like he’s reaching on out to me. I make the tea the best I ever made it. I even do the hot part. I put it down in front of him and look at his hands, all scratched up like he’s been banging them on walls all his life, nails so short they’re looking like a new knuckle.

  He’s looking at me, too, expecting me to say things. So I ask him a question.

  ‘The trees – where are they?’

  Ezra-Dad takes a deep breath in and looks mighty tired all of a sudden. His eyes leave mine for the grey Outside again.

  ‘They died with her.’

  He sips his tea. I sip mine. His words have frozen up my insides, though, making the tea feel extra-hot in my chest. It hurts.

  The trees died with her.

  Thirty-Seven

  The trees are all dead.

  I make it up the stairs and into bed without even thinking. I pull the covers over my head and, in the darkness, the bad thoughts come. They follow each other like drips from a tap, getting faster until you can’t turn the tap off.

  They mix up together until they paint me a real picture. A memory.

  What happened after Zeb died.

  Waiting by the door. Not sleeping. Not eating. Not thinking.

  Until … footsteps.

  And I ain’t Outside no more. I’m Inside again.

  I think about standing. Think about doing something when He comes through the door – maybe whacking Him on the head, or making a run for it. But I can’t move, even if I want to. Zeb’s tried every one of those things before.

  He’s too strong.

  He’s coming.

  The footsteps stop on the other side of the door. There’s a pause. Then green.

  Whoosh! Air from Outside. And there He is, all big and shadow, looking into my empty corner. He spots me near the door, cusses loud and slams it closed real quick, then hurls His leg back and kicks it out again.

  Thwack!

  His foot hits me so hard it feels cold. Like that numb feeling you get when you dunk your head under the tap, but all at once. All in my chin bone.

  And smack! I hit the floor, my neck swinging like a door and slamming the back of my head into it, too.

  The air is full of broken metal. It’s buzzing in my head and melting in my mouth.

  Blood.

  Hands on my arm, lifting me up. I can’t see. Ain’t even got no thoughts but exclamation marks. Then I’m upright and the floor is taking my jaw down and the pain kicks in.

  I scream out. It hurts me something terrible, though, so I just gargle on my own blood, hands trying to keep my teeth from falling out.

  ‘Just let me see, will yer!’

  Him. His fingers push into my mouth. Pain bites me. I scream again.

  ‘Goddamn it, girl! What yer doin’ so close to the door, anyhow?’

  He’s cussing, hitting my hands away, moving my jaw this way and that. My eyes start working again. He looks worried.

  I hate Him.

  ‘Whrrrr,’ I groan, still trying to hold my mouth together.

  He stops poking. Eyes darken. ‘What did yer … did yer just say somethin’?’

  I don’t speak to Him. Someone else does, using my throat. ‘Whrrrrr!’

  He blinks. My blood is streaked on His face.

  ‘Yer tryin’ to say “where”?’

  I look at Him. At His grey eyes with dark pits. I throw my gaze over to the door and back at Him.

  He rubs more of my blood across His chin. ‘Yer looking for the boy?’

  He laughs, and it’s like He’s still kicking me. Again. Again. The pain grows up inside of me like a tree, and I pull my fist back ready to smack Him in the face and –

  He catches my hand. Sound is swallowed. His lip curls real evil.

  ‘Yer boy is gone. Dead. You ever so much as think about doin’ what he did, I’ll kill yer an’ all.’

  He forces me back against the wall with His knee, leaning in, and pushes His finger into my chin.

  Pain thumps around the bones in my head.

  ‘But I won’t be so quick about it with yer.’

  He pushes His finger in some more and white-hot noise fills me up and, just when I reckon I can’t take it no more, it stops.

  He lifts Himself up, strides to the door. My hands are reaching on out, trying to claw Him back by the boots, but He’s too fast. I’m crawling, knees scratching up on the floor. Door opens. I throw myself after Him.

  I don’t make it. It closes. The light switches to red.

  And I take up my hands and I hit the door – hard. With all I have. The pain thwacks through me, but I need it. I need it somewhere other than my head and my jaw, so I do it again. And again. I do it until it’s all I have and all I am and –

  Bang.

  I whack my hands on that window again and again, making a racket that goes right up the bones of my arms and screams inside my head. I see that Outside and I hate it. Hate it for being all grey and not green, and cold and not warm. For not having no Mermaids or gingerbread houses that I can see. For having a sun that hurts me and mirrors that lie to me.

  For not having no trees.

  I slap that glass ’til it starts turning red. The sky turns pink. Lines drip down. My hands scream out for me to stop, but I keep pounding, the sound filling up my chest, ’til I can’t take no more and I start throwing myself at the glass instead. My whole body, then just my head. My stupid head that can’t follow no rules. That keeps thinking of the Inside.

  Bang.

  Bang.

  Things start to turn purple. I hear my name being called out.

  Bang.

  ‘Ele! Stop that!’

  Bang.

  And then hands. Hands rough as wall on my neck, on my face. I fight them off, trying to throw myself out again, ’cause now that
I’ve stopped all the hurt has time to start spreading. But they’re too strong. I fall into those arms and they hold me real tight.

  ‘It’s OK.’ His voice sounds awful loud with my ear to his chest. He smells of tables. ‘It’s OK.’

  His hands are on my cheeks. They pull my head up, out of the dream, into the real.

  Ezra-Dad. Brown eyes. Orange eyebrows.

  My jaw ain’t broke.

  I hold on to his hands like they’re holding me up. Look at him. He don’t break his eye contact. Not to watch my blood rain down on the window. Not to ask me why I was doing it. Just to be there.

  I grip him. My breath wheezes in and out of me.

  ‘The trees,’ I gasp. ‘They’re dead?’

  Ezra-Dad’s eyes turn sad, but they don’t leave mine for one second. ‘Nae,’ he says. ‘Ah shouldnae have said that. There are still trees.’

  The air rushes back into my lungs. I swallow it down, spitting out the rest of my dream. I pull him towards me, wrapping my hands over his neck so he has to bend right over, and I hold him to me tight. My hands leave streaks of red on his shoulders.

  He holds me back.

  We stand like that. Together. Must be for days.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he says.

  And slowly, slowly, I start to believe him.

  Something shuffles at the door behind me, and Ezra-Dad drops me like too-hot tea. I stumble round, blinking.

  Willow stands at the door. He’s got something all wrapped up in pink paper by his side. His mouth hangs open.

  ‘Willow!’ I rub my eyes, and Ezra-Dad is trying to hide his, too. When I finally look at him, I see that he’s looking mighty strangely at Ezra-Dad. At the bloody handprints on his shoulders. At the tears in his beard.

  I rub my hands down my dress. ‘Ezra-Dad –’

  Willow flicks his eyes to me. ‘It’s just Ezra, Ele. He’s not your dad.’

  I bite my stupid tongue. ‘Yeah, I know –’

  ‘Well, I don’t know if you do.’ He throws the pink package he was holding on to the bed. It rolls off on to the floor and all these different-coloured balls burst out.

  ‘Will,’ Ezra-Dad starts, but Willow steps back.

  ‘Nae,’ Willow says, more like a grunt than a word. ‘You’re OK.’

  He don’t meet my eye as he leaves.

  I go to follow him, but Ezra-Dad catches my shoulder and pulls me back.

  ‘Bed,’ he grunts.

  ‘I ain’t tired,’ I say, trying to shrug him off.

  ‘Now.’

  I scowl at him. He’s got my blood all over him. Looking at it makes me feel funny. I get into bed.

  ‘What did I do?’ I ask, nodding to the door.

  Ezra-Dad brings a green bag back from the bathroom and starts wiping my hands with a cloth that smells of bad things. It stings, but he does it gentle.

  ‘Ignore him.’

  I scowl again. ‘I don’t want to.’

  The cloth comes away all red. He throws it away and wraps up my palms in white cloths from a pack that says BANDAGES on the front.

  ‘He’s just being childish.’

  I ain’t sure that’s all it is.

  Ezra-Dad finishes up with my hands, then wipes my blood off the window with another cloth and backs out of the room.

  ‘OK?’ he says, hovering in the door.

  I nod slowly.

  He leaves, and my ears follow him into the room that Willow is sleeping in.

  ‘What?’ Willow’s voice is muffled through the wall.

  ‘Ele,’ Ezra-Dad says, ‘she’s nae from yer school, is she?’

  My heart quickens.

  ‘That’s what you came in here to talk about?’

  ‘Willow. Answer the question, will ye?’

  I hear Willow sigh. ‘Close the door.’

  There is a squeak and a click and their voices turn to mumbles. I get out of bed and tiptoe over to the wall and press my ear to it.

  I can’t make out their words. Their weird way of saying things is difficult anyway, even without a wall in the way. They’re talking about me, though. I know it.

  The door opens again and I listen as Ezra-Dad leaves Willow’s room. I expect him to come marching on back in here and tell me that I can’t stay here no more. Or, worse, that I’ll have to go back there.

  I clench my fists at my sides.

  But Ezra-Dad don’t come for me. He sighs and treads downstairs, in that slow, careful way he has.

  They ain’t kicking me out yet, then. So what are they doing?

  I walk to the end of the bed. The pink thing Willow flung is all bent and broken on the floor. I pick it up, sneezing.

  It’s paper, and it’s open at the top. Inside, there are more of them coloured balls, some of them like open fists. They are all poking up out of green sticks tied up together with string. And I know what they are. I know from the picture of the cottage in the woods in ‘Rapunzel’. They’re flowers.

  I don’t breathe. My wrapped-up hands are all shaky as they poke at the little coloured fingers, soft as Bee’s cheeks. I bend down and pick up all the broken ones on the floor, trying to fit them all back inside.

  Flowers. For me. Real flowers.

  I tuck myself back up in bed, resting the flowers next to my head. They smell mighty strong and itch at my eyes, but I don’t stop looking at them. The big red ones all closed up. The wide, flat purple ones. The white ones huddled together like clouds. And my favourite of them all: the ones that look like leaves.

  ‘Why did he throw you away?’ I whisper to them. ‘Why you and not me?’

  Some loud music starts banging up a storm from the wall between my room and Willow’s. It ain’t like violin music. It’s angrier. I listen with everything I can, but I can’t make out the words.

  Willow really needs to work on his knocking.

  Thirty-Eight

  ‘What are ye doing?’ Ezra-Dad asks me as he comes up the stairs, smelling of breakfast.

  I’m sitting on the floor in front of Willow’s door. I can hear him getting ready for school, cussing to himself.

  ‘I want to say thank you,’ I say. ‘For the flowers.’

  Ezra-Dad raises an eyebrow, but grunts, stepping on by me. ‘I wouldnae talk tae him in the morning if ah was ye. He’s a terror until noon.’ He stops and turns round, his hand in his beard. ‘Ah have something for ye, actually. If ye go downstairs …’

  I jump to my feet. ‘Is it a book?’

  He mumbles, ‘Might be, if ye want tae ruin the surprise …’

  I fumble downstairs as quick as I can, my bandaged-up hands sliding down the banister. When I get to the living room, though, there ain’t no book waiting for me. Just my other two, sitting on a shelf of their own that someone has gone and cleared for me. They’re both stood up tall next to each other and beside them there’s enough room for even more books. Maybe even twelve more, if they were little, like The Alphabet Book.

  I hear Ezra-Dad behind me and, when I turn round, I see he’s holding something that looks mighty like a book.

  I snatch it from his hands.

  It’s all warm from where he’s been holding it. It’s huge. Bigger than any book I ever did see before. And on it are leaves.

  The Gardener’s Companion.

  ‘Thank you,’ I whisper.

  I catch his eye looking at me, even though he grunts to cover it up.

  The pages are shiny, like they’ve never been read before. It ain’t a story – I can tell that from the very first page. It’s just like An Encyclopaedia of British Trees, but this one is about all kinds of different plants. Flowers, like the ones Willow got me. Bushes of all different types. There ain’t many words, but the pictures are everything. They’re alive. In this book, they’re alive.

  ‘Now, I’m gonnae tell ye something, OK?’ Ezra-Dad says, looking all about the room so I ain’t sure he’s even talking to me. ‘Plants are … are a bit like folk.’

  I flop down on the chair, looking for faces in the pict
ures of flowers. ‘’Cause they’re all green?’

  ‘Nae.’

  ‘’Cause they need watering all the time?’

  ‘Aye, they do, but –’

  ‘’Cause –’

  ‘Och! Just let me finish, will ye?’

  I bite my lip and smile, still flicking through the pages.

  ‘Plants are like people ’cause they need a lot tae grow, OK?’ He starts pacing up and down, his hands in his pockets. ‘Some of them shoot right up, even when yer nae paying any attention tae them. But others …’ He eyes the ceiling, where Willow is stomping around, turning off his music. ‘Others need a wee bit more time. Ye got tae give them more room tae grow.’

  I run my finger down the edge of the pages and nod. ‘OK.’

  And, when Willow comes downstairs and heads out of the door, I don’t try to meet him on the way. I give him his room to grow.

  Thirty-Nine

  Ezra-Dad reads a book called the newspaper at the table. He gets a new one every day. I sit next to him and read all the bits with him.

  ‘What does “for sale” mean?’ I ask, stopping him from turning the page.

  He grumbles, ‘What it says.’

  He moves my finger out of the way and he turns the page.

  For a while, I think Ezra-Dad likes to read fast, but when I watch his eyes move I see he’s mainly just reading one or two things – not all the words.

  ‘Why ain’t you reading that?’ I ask, pointing to a big square that says: You could be entitled to up to £5,000 in mis-sold PPI. It even has a funny picture on it of a woman wearing ear-hats.

  He grunts. ‘Advert.’

  ‘But it says you could get money.’

  He licks his finger and uses it to turn the page again. ‘Pack of lies.’

  I sit back, shaking my head. ‘Everyone knows books are filled with truth.’

  ‘Aye, but this isnae a book.’

  I don’t like the newspaper much after that. Seems a bit stupid to me, reading things that ain’t real. It don’t make much sense, anyway. It starts off telling the story of a man who was caught having something called an ‘affair’ with a lady, and then next moment they’re gone and we’re hearing about something called the ‘Olympic Games’ and ‘athletes’. And it ends with men called ‘footballers’, who I guess ball people’s feet up. It ain’t a nice ending.