Grow

by Luke Palmer

  As he goes, I see Dana and Alan on the other side of the canteen, looking at me. Alan raises a thumb. He gestures with it when I seem reluctant to raise one back. Dana tries to bat his arm down, looking embarrassed. I offer a single wave, a flash of a smile, then go back to looking out of the window.

  *

  Jamie finds me again on the way home, steering around the knots of younger kids that seem to fill the pavement.

  ‘You’ll never guess what,’ he says.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘Amber got me to come to her office this afternoon. Middle of double-chem, so I’m fine with that.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I figured it might be something to do with you, you know, last weekend? There’s been rumours, I guess.’ He looks at me, slightly guilty.

  The bruise, as Mr Walters said, is still glowing. I hope it means that Jamie can’t see me blush.

  ‘Anyway, it wasn’t,’ Jamie continues. ‘I get to her office and there’s this kid there I’ve never seen before. Amad, Ackmed, something like that. Syrian kid, Miss Amber said. And he’s there with his mum. Or she looks like his mum. Turns out this kid is starting here on Monday, and Amber wants me to be his buddy.’

  I look at Jamie. I can’t work out whether he feels proud to be asked, or put out. Jamie’s the kind of guy who always gets asked to do things like this. He’s bright, well liked and good with people.

  ‘That’s alright though, right?’ I answer.

  ‘Yeah, I guess I can be his “buddy”…’ There’s something Jamie’s not saying. I feel like he’s asking my permission.

  ‘So what’s the problem.’

  He sighs a bit before he answers. ‘You know Alan Almes, right?’

  I nod. ‘Sort of. Haven’t spoken to him for years though.’

  ‘Sure. Well, there’s people saying that his brother,’ Jamie looks at me sideways at this point. ‘His brother and him have been doing pretty nasty stuff. Like, anti-Muslim stuff.’

  I think I can tell where this is heading. The word he wants to say. To me.

  ‘It’s not that I think like that. Not at all. You know that, right? I’m not a racist.’

  I nod, unsure if I want him to continue or not.

  ‘It’s just all over the place at the moment, isn’t it? That’s what you’re supposed to think. About “them” or whatever. I just don’t want people thinking I’m hanging out with a … terrorist.’

  And there it is.

  NINETEEN

  We don’t get many Muslims here. We don’t get much of anything here except more of the same, but of the things that we do get, Muslims are quite far down the list. There are two kids in our year whose parents are Polish, and one whose dad is Romanian. Maybe there’s a handful of non-white kids in the whole school. That’s about it for diversity.

  I once heard someone say that if you’ve never been to England before, just seen the films and read the books, this town is what England must look like in your head. I’m not sure about that; the estates are a bit grim, and you have to really hunt if you want to see anything old, like those wooden beams crisscrossing old-fashioned houses. The real ones, I mean, not the ones they paint on the posher estates. There’s a stone archway and crest above the entrance to the shopping centre. Not much else. On the high street there’s a few shops amongst the coffee chains. Beyond that, there’s the estates. Then it’s mostly just fields. Occasionally, some traveller families set up just off the bypass and everyone talks about it for weeks, reminds you to double-lock your doors, sheds, cars, wallets. They say things like ‘Give ’em an inch…’ and everyone knows what they mean, whether they agree or not.

  There’s a lady who used to do the washing and ironing for Mum. She’d put the ironing board up in front of the TV and watch the news in our living room. She revelled in telling the TV what she thought. ‘Foreigners’ this and ‘immigrants’ that. Her husband lost his job at a local factory that was closing down. They made light-fittings, or something like that. Whatever it was she was, angry about his job being ‘taken’ and seemed to be blaming ‘them’. She’d always ask if there were any of ‘them’ at my school. She’d heard lots of stories about ‘them’, what ‘they’ got up to, what ‘they’ ate. ‘We’re as English as the hills around here,’ she used to say to anyone else in the house, then make some comment about the white horses carved into the hillsides. So, I guess people around here are very ‘English’. And there’s a heap of assumptions thrown in with that word that you can almost hear dripping from the sides of some of their mouths. English means Natural. It means Normal. It means Native. Whatever that is.

  So the word ‘terrorist’ doesn’t really fit in here, even though it’s been used a lot lately – on the news, online, in the classrooms – and I still don’t know how I feel about it. Every time I hear it, I think of Dad. Victim of terrorists, killed by an Act of Terror. And that makes me angry. Why does someone have the right to take away a person’s life for living in a different way from them?

  But that’s just the point, I think. They don’t have the right. That’s what makes them terrorists.

  Maybe people are just too scared of each other, or of people and things they don’t know. Dad worked in London a lot, and me and mum used to go to meet him sometimes. Quite often actually. We’d do the standard tourist stuff – go to the theatre, do the London Eye, have dinner in Chinatown maybe. Or a few times we went to exhibitions, grabbed some food from a street market, or somewhere like that. I’m not saying I saw a lot of the world, but I think I saw a bit more of it than people do who never leave here. The woman that did the ironing never knew why we bothered. ‘You’ll never get me in one of them foreign places,’ she used to say. I think she meant London as well.

  I’m not sure what I’m saying, but I get this hot feeling in my stomach when people throw that word around. Terrorist. It’s all over the newspapers. That’s why Mum won’t have any in the house. It’s why I have to get all my news (when I want it) on my laptop, normally after she’s gone to bed.

  A while back, about six months after the explosion, Mum was asked to appear on some TV show and talk about what was being done about Muslim communities as a result of all of the attacks that kept happening. I think she was supposed to say how terrible it was that people were turning violent, and that we had to stay peaceful and not let our anger spill out and treat them as some of them treated us. She never did it, of course, and she only told me about it after she’d said no, spitting out the ‘them’s and the ‘us’es. I do remember hearing her swearing down the phone a few times to mysterious callers though – that must have been it. I wouldn’t have liked to be the person that asked her.

  And then I think of the video that I watched – that I chose to watch – last night. And how I almost watched it a third time. And I think of that half-grin, half-snarl at the end. And my stomach gets hot again.

  Of course, I say none of this to Jamie, who’s still looking at me and waiting for a response to the word he’s used.

  I’d like to say, ‘he’s not a terrorist’. But I don’t. I just feel my cheeks burning even more under my bruise.

  I’d like to ask Jamie if he’s asking my permission to look after a kid with brown skin because my dad was murdered by a person with maybe a slightly different shade of brown skin, which somehow makes me an expert on the matter.

  I’d like to show Jamie that video and ask him if he thinks that’s OK, and whether he’d just stand by and watch that kind of thing happen, which is what it feels I’ve done by watching it. I’d like to ask him if that’s OK.

  I’d like to ask him what that smile on Dana’s boyfriend’s face at the end of that video is all about and I’d like to ask him whether, if I spend more time with her, her boyfriend might smile like that after doing to me what he did to the man in the turban, the man who might not even have been Muslim – not that it mattered to Dana’s boyfriend, I guess – and whether he’d stand by and watch that happen as well.

  I’d like to
do all of these things. But I don’t. I just keep walking.

  ‘See you tomorrow?’ Jamie calls after me as I leave him at the top of his road.

  TWENTY

  Saturday, and I’m hunched on the side lines at the recreation ground. The weather’s turned; it’s drizzling, and even though there’s only been a few hours of it, it feels like it won’t stop until March.

  Jamie and a few of the other guys – Will and Mike – nod hello as they jog out of the changing rooms and onto the pitch. Being here again brings a few memories back. Sights, sounds, smells. I don’t think the smell in those changing rooms will ever leave me – a mixture of damp socks, deodorant and that sharp, hospital smell you get from deep-heat spray. On days like today, when it’s cold and damp, a cloud of smell wafts over the field every time the door opens.

  Ben was always last out of the changing room, and still is. He’s got a strange ritual about touching all the benches in a certain order before he steps outside, and the rest of the team just leave him to get on with it. As he sidles past, heading for the goal which he’ll guard for the first half, he says that I’m like a bus. ‘Don’t see you for ages, then twice in two weeks!’

  ‘Yep, a really crap, slow bus.’ I smile. And I start to admit to myself that I’ve missed this.

  It’s not much of a game, the ball skidding around on the surface and neither team able to get it under control. There’s a goal apiece at the end of the first thirty minutes, both of them scrappy and more by accident than design.

  At half time, it seems that Mike’s mum still brings quartered oranges for everyone. I watch her in the centre circle, handing them out, collecting the skins in another bag. Will’s dad, the manager since Jamie’s dad left, is giving his usual talk. At one point, everyone turns my way and they wave. I wave back, a little confused.

  Standing on the left wing and ready to start the second half, a kid called George tells me they’ve been told to play up because I’m watching and I might want my spot on the team back.

  I grin, ‘Maybe.’

  They end up losing three – one.

  ‘Some mascot you turned out to be,’ Ben half-jokes on his way back to the changing room. He’s covered in mud and doesn’t look happy.

  ‘Good to see you again Josh,’ says Will’s dad as he passes, not so muddy but just as deflated. ‘You’re welcome to bring your boots any time, you know. You can see we’re lacking in the middle of the park.’ He gestures over his shoulder at the field of their recent defeat. ‘The lads’d like to have you back, I think. Those passes you used to make are sorely missed, wouldn’t you say?’

  I smile, ‘Yeah, maybe,’ and watch his departing back, shoulders stooped, as he trudges off.

  I walk home, and consider going past Dana’s garden, but the rain is starting to trickle down inside the hood of my coat, and the thought of pushing through wet nettles doesn’t appeal to me too much. Besides which, I don’t have a key, and Dana would probably kill me herself if she found out I’d broken her new lock, never mind asking Carl to do it for her.

  Mum seems oddly buoyant when I come through the back door. It’s a rare occasion she comes home from her parents’ this early on a Saturday and I’m surprised to see her.

  ‘Josh,’ she half-whispers, conspiratorially. ‘There’s a girl in the living room.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘In. There.’ She points over her shoulder with her thumb, as if I don’t know where the living room is. ‘She’s waiting for you. Gosh, you’re soaking.’

  It must be someone posh. Mum only says things like ‘gosh’ and makes a fuss of me when she has people to impress. She peels my coat off and more or less pushes me through the door of the sitting room, thrusting two scalding hot mugs of tea into my hands as she does so, spilling some on the carpet. ‘Give her one of these,’ she hisses. And then, in her ‘gosh’ voice, ‘I’ll leave you two alone for a while.’

  Dana stands up as I spin into the room.

  TWENTY ONE

  ‘Hi.’ She sounds sheepish, out of place.

  ‘Hi.’ So do I.

  We stand and look at each other for a little bit, then I hand her a cup of tea and we sit down. At her feet, her school bag yawns, zip open. There are a few dog-eared exercise books and a cracked biro on the coffee table.

  ‘I told your mum we had a revision date,’ Dana offers.

  ‘Oh.’

  We go back to silence. I run a thumb across the scrolled paper of her books.

  ‘I actually am a little bit behind.’

  ‘So, do you want to…’

  ‘Only if you…’

  ‘Yeah, OK. Sure.’

  At the window, the rain persists. We watch it for a while.

  ‘My mum had some friends over. She told me I had to get out.’

  ‘So you came here?’

  ‘Yeah, is that OK?’

  I’m not sure, yet. It can’t have been her first choice. We sip our tea. I’ve got a strange feeling that the wet world outside and all the small channels of water are about to unhook themselves from whatever it is that they’re hooked to, and the whole lot will slowly slip away, leaving just this room and its window looking out on nothingness.

  ‘Oi!’ I’m shaken from my daydream.

  ‘Sorry. Shall we… er?’

  ‘Your room? Sure. Why not?’

  I can think of one good reason. A big reason. With hard fists.

  Dana seems to know what I’m thinking. ‘I do just want to revise though. Right?’ Her eyes narrow at me. Suddenly I want to go and stand out in the rain and flow away with the great unhooking of everything. Then she smiles a bit, throwing the pen and her books back into her bag.

  ‘Come on then. Where is it?’

  *

  We do about an hour’s worth of revision. Sciences, mostly. Then Mum calls up the stairs. We come down to beans on toast – not burnt. Mum really is making an effort – and more tea.

  ‘So you two know each other from school?’

  ‘Yeah, a bit. And Josh is really good, and I’m really behind and not that good, so I asked if he could help.’

  ‘You didn’t say that, Josh. I wish you’d have let me know Dana was coming today. I almost wasn’t here – found Dana dripping under our tiny porch. It looked like she’d been there for hours.’

  ‘Sorry, Mum.’

  ‘No, it’s fine, love. I’ll wait until you’re done to run the hoover round. Now, who’s for flapjack? Nanna did a batch yesterday, Josh. Said they were for you, to make sure you stay big and strong. He loves his nanna’s flapjack, Dana.’

  I can feel Dana grinning, Mum grinning back.

  ‘Look at him, Dana, if it weren’t for that big bruise, he’d be as red as a tomato all over!’

  *

  Back upstairs again, I can tell that Dana’s lost interest in working. She starts to flick her pen against my desk while I sit on the bed and talk about osmosis through a semi-permeable membrane.

  ‘What’s a perm-able what?’

  ‘Semi-permeable. It means it lets some things through. Really small things.’

  ‘I’m bored. Can we do something else?’

  I lean over her to pluck a Chemistry textbook from the shelf over the desk, and she jabs a playful hand into my armpit. Three books tumble off the shelf, one hitting her on the head, another upending the dregs of cold tea.

  ‘Jesus, careful.’ She picks up her notes, shakes off the tea.

  I step back towards the bed. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I didn’t mean more work.’

  ‘So … what then?’

  ‘Just … talk and stuff.’

  I sit down again. ‘About what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Stuff.’ She’s intently concentrating on the loosening end of tape that’s holding her biro together.

  ‘OK.’

  The rain has stopped, but there’s a slow and steady drip from the gutter above my window. I count drips; one, two, three.

  I get to twelve before she speaks.

 
; ‘Do you want me to go?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘God’s sake, Josh, why don’t you just—’

  ‘Why did you come here?’ The question surprises me as much as her.

  ‘I … I don’t know. I don’t really have many friends at school that I can drop in on.’

  ‘So the guy that your boyfriend beat up last week is an obvious first choice?’ I’m angry. I hadn’t realised.

  It’s Dana’s turn to watch the window. The grey light catches in the small pools that are forming at the corners of her eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘It’s not a problem.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she sniffs, wiping her eyes with a sleeve. ‘It is. I feel really bad about last weekend, and I guess I thought that if I came over then we could…’ There’s a long pause before she continues, and she wipes her eyes again. ‘I don’t know. I guess I thought you’d like me again like you did last week if I came over.’

  ‘You’re not the one who hit me. Why wouldn’t I like you?’

  ‘Because you don’t really know me.’

  ‘Maybe. But on Thursday…’

  ‘I’m sorry about what I said on Thursday. At the end. When you were going.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I say. But again I’m not quite sure.

  ‘I’ve never shown anyone that place before. I guess I was scared I got it wrong. I think I showed you because, last week, it felt like you would understand it. That you’d like it. Because of what happened to your dad and everything and how you don’t seem…’