Ways to Live Forever

by Sally Nicholls

  “M-A-R-I-A-N,” I read, as the jelly baby moved across the board. “Marian!”

  “Marian who?”

  “T-W-A-N-E-T. Pack it in!” I said. “Marie Antoinette’s not spelt like that.”

  “Who is it?” demanded Ella. “Who is it? Sam?”

  “It must be a mischievous spirit,” said Felix, dead serious. “Or maybe she can’t spell. Are you the Queen of France?”

  YES

  “Is that you moving it?” said Ella uncertainly. “How’s it moving?”

  “It’s the power of the undead,” Felix told her. “You can ask a question if you want.”

  “I don’t want to,” said Ella immediately. She looked at me. So did Felix.

  “Why do I have to think of something?”

  “You’re the one with all the questions.”

  “Not for dead people!”

  “She could do your whole project for you,” Felix said.

  I sighed. “All right. What’s it like, being undead?”

  “B-O-R-I-N-G.” Now Ella was reading out the letters. “What do you do all day?” she added, greatly daring.

  “D-R-I-N-K G-I-N.”

  “Felix!”

  “What? It’s not me!”

  “A-N-D E-A-T C-A-K-E! She says she eats cake!”

  “Stop messing with it!”

  “I am not messing with it!” said Felix. “Look, let’s ask her about us. Is Sam ever going to finish his book?”

  I decided it was my turn to move it.

  “D-E-F-I-”

  Felix (or the spirit of Marian Twanet) fought towards the NO. I fought back.

  And won.

  YES

  “How does she know that?” Ella stared, round-eyed.

  “She knows everything,” I said, triumphant.

  VISITS

  30th January

  Today, three of my aunts came to visit. We get visited a lot now. Dad got to hide in his study and Ella got to go play with my cousin Kiara, but I had to sit and look polite. This is because they’d supposedly come a long way to see me. Only they hadn’t come to see me. If they had, we’d have done something fun. We’d have tried out the remote-control plane Auntie Sarah gave me.6 Or played with the computer game from Auntie Carolyn. Instead, I had to sit and listen to them yakking on and on and drinking tea.

  It wasn’t a very exciting visit.

  They said, “How are you?” to Mum, and she said, “Oh, you know. Doing the best we can.”

  And they said, “And how are you?” to me, and I said, “Fine.”

  And then they spent three hours talking about my cousin Pete’s part in some play and how much better my Auntie Sarah’s eczema has been since they started buying organic vegetables.

  After they’d gone, Dad came down from his study and found Mum staring at the salad drawer from the fridge.

  “It’s a tomato,” he said to Mum. She didn’t answer. “Not one of my sisters.”

  “Do you think we should start buying organic food?” said Mum.

  “What?” said Dad.

  “Organic food. It might be more healthy. For Sam. And all of us.”

  “I don’t think it would make the slightest bit of difference,” said Dad. He took the tomato out of Mum’s hand and put it on the table. “Why is the window open?”

  “I opened it,” said Mum.

  “But it’s freezing!” said Dad.

  Mum didn’t say anything. She went back to staring at the tomato.

  “Rachel?” said Dad.

  “Sarah always leaves her windows open!” Mum burst out. “And nothing ever happens to her children!”

  Dad stared at her. Then he came up to her and put his arms around her.

  “Hey,” he said, very gently.

  Mum didn’t say anything.

  “This isn’t because of anything you did.”

  Mum rubbed her head against his shoulder. “I know,” she said in a whisper. Dad squeezed her arm.

  “That’s right,” he said. Then he went and closed the window, very firmly.

  WHY I WANT AN AIRSHIP

  I want an airship. They’re the best. They’re kind of big hot air balloons, but shaped like a 0 lying on its side. And they’ve got a motor and you can steer them, so you can go wherever you want.

  You can build your own mini airship in your garage. People have. I think that’d be amazing – it’d be like having your own plane, but better. You could fly it everywhere and when you got where you were going, you wouldn’t need a helipad or a runway – you’d just tie up to a mountain or something and climb down the rope. And when you were done, you’d climb back up and fly on. You could wave at all the people stuck in traffic jams and laugh at them. If you saw someone you didn’t like – like Craig Todd from school or my old teacher, Mr Cryfield – you could spit on them – splat! – or drop tomatoes on their head and they couldn’t do anything about it.

  You could go anywhere on it. Not just boring places like to the shops, but to Africa or America or anywhere. You wouldn’t have to worry about tickets or passports or hanging around in airports, you’d just set off. Airships can cross seas, easy. You could tie up to the Statue of Liberty or the Leaning Tower of Pizza. And if anyone tried to stop you – “Hasta la vista, suckers!” – you’d just cast off and fly away.

  You could go anywhere – anywhere. And no one would be able to stop you.

  BE A TEENAGER

  1st February

  I went round to Felix’s again yesterday, for the afternoon. Felix answered the door.

  “Hello!” he said. He nodded to Dad. “Hello, Sam’s dad.”

  “Hello, Sam’s friend,” said Dad, dead serious. He likes Felix. “Sam, I’ll pick you up after tea, OK?”

  We waved him off all the way to the car.

  “Goodbye . . . goodbye . . . going . . . going . . . gone!” Felix shut the door and turned to me. “Now what?”

  We went to Felix’s bedroom. It’s on the ground floor, like mine, and it looks like a proper teenage room. The walls are painted black and covered with postcards and posters of rock groups with floppy black hair and piercings. The door has yellow hazard tape stuck across it and a sign that says “DANGER: UNEXPLODED BOMB”.

  I always feel weird in Felix’s room. I thought about my room, with the blue furniture and the three shelves of books and the windowsill with the ship-in-a-bottle and my best Warhammer models and bits of quartz and fossils from Robin Hood’s Bay. Felix is two school years ahead of me and he’s supposed to be at secondary school. But I’m eleven and he’s thirteen. That’s not much older.

  “What?” said Felix. He was watching me.

  “Nothing,” I said. Then, “I was just thinking about my list. ‘Be a teenager’.” I hesitated. “It was a stupid one to put.”

  “Pretty hard without a time machine,” Felix agreed. “And who would waste a time machine on being a teenager?” He looked across at me and laughed. “Cheer up! The most important bit is doing the things, really, isn’t it? Go drinking and smoking and have a girlfriend.” He fumbled in the pocket on his chair and began pulling things out. A mobile phone, a fistful of Starburst wrappers and a map of Newcastle.

  “What’re you doing?” I asked suspiciously.

  “Making all your wishes come true,” said Felix. He found a crumpled pack of cigarettes and pulled one out. “Here.”

  I took the cigarette from him and held it between my first two fingers, the way smokers do. Felix leaned forward and lit it. I hesitated, then put it to my mouth and sucked. It tasted of hot and bitter and smoke. I held the smoke in my mouth for as long as I could stand it, to make sure it properly counted, and then blew it out again, coughing and spluttering. Felix was grinning.

  “Like it?” he said.

  “It’s all right,” I said awkwardly. “Where. . .?” I waved the cigarette around, looking for somewhere to put it out.

  “Don’t you want the rest?” said Felix.

  “I’m OK,” I said. I was going to say smoking gives
you cancer, then I realized what a stupid thing it was to say. Felix ground the cigarette out on the arm of his wheelchair. He doesn’t actually smoke very often. He just likes the way it looks.

  “Come on, then,” he said. “Pass us my coat – there – you’re sitting on it. There.” I didn’t move. “Come on,” he said again.

  “Where’re we going?”

  “To do the other things, of course,” he said impatiently. “Hurry up, though. Before Mum comes and finds us something else to do.”

  We set off down the street. I pushed Felix, who directed.

  “Turn left. Cross over. Come on, fast! Faster! Can’t you go any faster than that?”

  He was having great fun not telling where we were going. All he would say was, “Don’t ask questions. Wait and see.”

  I couldn’t remember when I was last out on my own, without some grown-up fussing around. Felix’s mum hadn’t seemed to mind us going out.

  Felix just said, “We’re going to the Angel. We’ll be back for tea.”

  And she said, “All right, then. You’ll look after this young lad of mine for me, won’t you, Sam?”

  And I said, “Sure.”

  Felix’s streets were older than mine. All the houses look the same where I live. The houses there were terraced and they all looked different, because the people living in them had painted their doors bright red or put up hanging baskets or new bay windows.

  “Stop!” cried Felix.

  We slithered to a halt outside a scruffy little pub on the corner. It was called the Avenging Angel. The paint on the door was chipped and peeling. It was shut.

  “It’s shut,” I said.

  “I know that,” said Felix. “My uncle runs it. Knock there.”

  There was a white pub door and, by it, a blue house door. I knocked on the blue one. A girl younger than me answered. She had thick, wavy brown hair. She was wearing a little tartan skirt and black tights.

  “What do you want?” she said.

  “That’s friendly,” said Felix. “Honestly, we come all this way. . .” He shook his head. “I want to show Sam the Angel. Can I? Or is Uncle Mick around?”

  “He’s upstairs,” she said. “And I’m not supposed to take people round the bar.”

  “Isn’t she lovely?” said Felix. “Sam, this is my cousin Kayleigh. Kayleigh, this is my friend Sam from hospital.”

  Kayleigh peered at me. “What’s wrong with you?” she said.

  I didn’t really want to go into it. “I’ve got spheroidal globules,” I told her.7

  Kayleigh looked at Felix uncertainly.

  “Ignore him,” said Felix. “Are you going to let us in the pub or what?”

  “All right!” said Kayleigh. She tossed her head like she was really angry with us. “All right! But I’m blaming you if Dad catches us.” She disappeared. She was back a minute later in what looked like her dad’s trainers, with a great big jangly ring of keys to open the pub with.

  Inside the Angel, it was like she was the landlady and we were the customers. She flicked on all the lights and then went and sat behind the bar on one of those high stools you get in pubs. I stood awkwardly behind Felix, holding on to the handles of his chair. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do.

  Felix, of course, was right at home.

  “Can’t you serve us something, Kayleigh?” he said. “Sam wants to know what it’s like going out drinking. Haven’t you got anything interesting we could have?”

  Kayleigh sat up, all professional.

  “We’ve got lots of things,” she said. “There are loads of bottles Dad never uses all along the top shelf. D’you want one of them?”

  “Depends what it is,” I said cautiously.

  Kayleigh pushed the barstool up against the back wall and knelt on top of it.

  “Crème de menthe . . . that’s mint . . . crème de cacao . . . that’s coffee, I think, or chocolate . . . cherry brandy. . .”

  “That’s cherry,” said Felix unhelpfully. “That’s nice – have some of that one.”

  I would never go into someone else’s pub and start serving them drinks, but Kayleigh was as fearless as Felix. She poured a drizzle of cherry brandy into two shot glasses for us, and the mint one in another for her.

  “Go on, then,” said Felix, reaching up for his cherry brandy.

  I took the shot glass and sniffed at it. Then I took a sip. It wasn’t much like cherries. It was sweet and sticky and tasted of alcohol, like Christmas wine. There was only enough in the shot glass for a mouthful and then it was gone.

  “Well?” said Felix.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “That’s two teenage things down,” said Felix. He looked up at Kayleigh, who was sucking the last drops of alcohol off her fingers. “And one to go.”

  I knew exactly what he was thinking.

  “No!” I said.

  “What?”

  “No way!”

  “Oh, shut up.” Felix leaned forward in his chair. “Hey, Kayleigh.”

  Kayleigh was sprawled over the bar, pretty much lying on top of it. She looked down at Felix with her hair falling all over her face. “Yes, sir.”

  “If I dared you to do something, would you do it?”

  Kayleigh giggled. “No!”

  “Oh, go on. Don’t be a child.”

  Kayleigh righted herself, looking cautiously at us through the falling strands of hair. “It depends what it is.”

  “You’ve got to kiss Sam. Properly. On the mouth.”

  “Felix!”

  Kayleigh started giggling.

  “This is nothing to do with me,” I told her. “It’s all his idea.”

  “Shut up. Will you do it, Kayleigh?”

  Kayleigh went pink. “No! I mean, no! Not with you watching!”

  It took Felix about ten minutes to get her out from behind the bar. She kept giggling and going, “No, but –” and covering her face with her hands. I stood there looking embarrassed.

  “OK,” said Felix, at last. “OK. Kayleigh. Stop laughing. Get on with it.”

  Kayleigh was bright red by this point. “You aren’t allowed to look,” she said.

  “I’m not!”

  “I mean it. You have to turn right round.”

  “I am! Look!”

  “All right.” Kayleigh and I stood there, not looking at each other. I wondered if she was expecting me to do something and, if so, what it was. I moved forward. She looked up then and smiled. She came right up to me, and kissed me, awkwardly.

  On the mouth.

  GOING TO THE MOON

  1st February

  After we’d said goodbye to Kayleigh, me and Felix went and bought Refresher bars at the corner shop and sat and ate them in the park.

  “Well?” said Felix. “Was it gross?” But I wouldn’t tell him.

  “We’re getting there, you know,” said Felix. “Airships, being famous and space – that’s it, right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Is that what we’re doing next, building a rocket?”

  “Why not?” said Felix. He was sitting on the swing, legs dangling. He leaned back as far as he could. “We can do anything!” he shouted. “Anything!”

  I started swinging, as high as I could. I was tired, but I hadn’t felt as happy as this in ages. “We’re going to the Moon!” I shouted.

  It’s mad, I know. But who knows? Maybe we could.

  THE STORY OF STARS

  Do you know where we came from? True fact: we came from stars.

  When old stars die, they explode in this gigantic explosion, which makes a nebula. Nebulas are clouds of gas and dust. That’s where baby stars grow. All the gas and dust gets compressed, gravity sucks them in and they turn into stars. The bits that don’t turn into stars float around in space as planets or moons or comets, and if the conditions are right, plants and stuff start to grow and people are born. So we’re all made of bits of old star. But it’s a cycle. Because after millions of years the new star gets old and tired too and it explodes
and more baby stars get born. If the old stars didn’t die, you’d never get new ones.

  Here’s another true fact. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen are the elements you need for life. And if you look at comets, you see that they have pretty much the same proportion of these elements as we do.

  EXPLOSIONS

  2nd February

  I asked Mrs Willis about rockets today. “Could we build one, a proper one? Would it count as school?”

  “Anything counts as school if you try hard enough,” she said. “Rockets are clearly science. What do you want one for?”

  “To go up in space,” I said.

  “Ah,” she said. “Slightly harder. That probably comes under . . . um . . . imaginative learning.”

  “Does that mean no?” I said.

  “It means, don’t tell health and safety,” said Mrs Willis. “And don’t expect the education authority to pay. They can barely keep me in lighter fluid.”

  We had a good lesson. We did “Making Fireworks”, which really meant throwing iron filings and things into the burner on the cooker and watching them explode. Mrs Willis likes an explosion as much as anyone.

  The only thing was, Felix didn’t turn up.

  Mum rang Felix’s mum after lunch. She stayed out in the hall for ages. Then she came and sat at the table and watched me without saying anything. I was doing a tracing of a supernova.

  “Sam. . .” she said.

  “What happened to Felix?” I said.

  Mum wouldn’t answer properly. “Well,” she said. “That’s kind of what I want to talk to you about.”

  I looked up. Mum’s face was serious. She was twisting the cuff of her jumper, turning it round and round and round.

  “What?” I said. “Mum. What?”

  She took a deep breath. “Sam, Felix went into hospital this morning.”

  I stared. I didn’t know what to say. “But he can’t!” I thought.

  “Why?” I said.