Before I Die

by Jenny Downham

  ‘You’ll feel dreamy, not trippy.’

  That’s not very reassuring because I don’t think my dreams are like other people’s. I end up in desolate places that are hard to get back from. I wake up hot and thirsty.

  ‘I can get you some if you want,’ he says.

  ‘You can?’

  ‘Today if you like.’

  ‘Today?’

  ‘No time like the present.’

  ‘I promised my friend I wouldn’t do anything without her.’

  He raises an eyebrow. ‘That’s a lot to promise.’

  I look away and up to the house. Dad’ll be up soon and straight onto his computer. Cal will be off to school. ‘I could ring her, see if she can come over.’

  He zips up his jacket. ‘All right.’

  ‘Where are you going to get them from?’

  A slow smile lifts the edges of his mouth. ‘One day I’ll take you out on the bike and show you.’ He backs off down the path, still smiling. I’m held by his eyes, pale green in this early light.

  Fourteen

  ‘Where do you reckon he gets them from, Zoey?’

  She yawns hugely. ‘Legoland?’ she says. ‘Toytown?’

  ‘Why are you being so horrible?’

  She turns on the bed and looks at me. ‘Because he’s boring and ugly and you’ve got me, so I don’t know why you’re even interested. You shouldn’t have asked him for drugs. I told you I’d get them.’

  ‘You haven’t exactly been around.’

  ‘Last time I looked, you were flat on your back in hospital and I was visiting you!’

  ‘And last time I looked, I was only there because you told me to jump in a river!’

  She sticks her tongue out, so I turn back to the window. Adam got home ages ago, went inside for half an hour, then came back out and started raking leaves. I thought he’d have knocked on the door by now. Maybe we’re supposed to go to him.

  Zoey comes to stand beside me and we watch him together. Every time he loads leaves onto the wheelbarrow, dozens of them fly off again in the wind and settle back on the lawn.

  ‘Hasn’t he got anything better to do?’

  I knew she’d think that. She doesn’t have much patience for anything she has to wait for. If she planted a seed, she’d have to dig it back up and look at it every day to see if it was growing yet.

  ‘He’s gardening.’

  She gives me a withering look. ‘Is he retarded?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Shouldn’t he be at college or something?’

  ‘I think he looks after his mum.’

  She looks at me with plotting eyes. ‘You fancy him.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘You do. You’re secretly in love with him. You know stuff about him you couldn’t possibly know if you didn’t care.’

  I shake my head, try to put her off the scent. She’ll play with it now, make it bigger than it would have been without her.

  ‘Do you stand here every day spying on him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I bet you do. I’m going to ask him if he fancies you back.’

  ‘No, Zoey!’

  She runs to the door laughing. ‘I’m going to ask him if he wants to marry you!’

  ‘Please, Zoey. Don’t mess it up.’

  She walks slowly back across the room, shaking her head. ‘Tessa, I thought you understood the rules! Never let a bloke into your heart – it’s fatal.’

  ‘What about you and Scott?’

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘Why?’

  She smiles. ‘That’s just sex.’

  ‘No, it’s not. When you visited me at the hospital, you could barely drag your eyes from his face.’

  ‘Rubbish!’

  ‘It’s true.’

  Zoey used to live her life as if the human race was about to become extinct, like nothing really mattered. But around Scott, she goes all soft and warm. Doesn’t she know this about herself?

  She’s looking at me so seriously that I grab her face and kiss it, because I want her to smile again. Her lips are soft and she smells nice. It crosses my mind that it might be possible to suck some of her good white cells into me in this way, but she pushes me off before I have a chance to test my theory.

  ‘What did you do that for?’

  ‘Because you’re spoiling it. Now go and ask Adam if he’s got the mushrooms.’

  ‘You go.’

  I laugh at her. ‘We’ll both go.’

  She wipes her lips with her sleeve and looks confused. ‘OK, fine. Your bedroom’s starting to smell weird anyway.’

  When Adam sees us coming across the lawn, he puts down his rake and walks over to meet us at the fence. I feel a bit dizzy as he gets closer. The garden seems brighter than before.

  ‘This is my friend Zoey.’

  He nods at her.

  ‘I’ve heard so much about you!’ she tells him. And she sighs, a sound that makes her seem small and helpless. Every boy I ever knew thought Zoey was gorgeous.

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Oh yes! Tessa talks about you all the time!’

  I give her a quick kick to shut her up, but she dodges me and swishes her hair about.

  ‘Did you get them?’ I ask, wanting to distract him from her.

  He reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a small plastic bag and passes it to me. Inside are small dark mushrooms. They look half formed, secret, not quite ready for the world.

  ‘Where did you get them?’

  ‘I picked them.’

  Zoey snatches the bag from me and holds it up. ‘How do we know they’re right? They could be toadstools!’

  ‘They’re not,’ he says. ‘They’re not Death Caps or Destroying Angels either.’

  She frowns, passes them back to him. ‘I don’t think we’ll bother. We’re better off with Ecstasy.’

  ‘Do both,’ he tells her. ‘These now and E another day.’

  She turns to me. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think we should take them.’

  But then, I’ve got nothing to lose.

  Adam grins. ‘Good,’ he says. ‘Come over and I’ll make some tea with them.’

  * * *

  It’s so clean in his kitchen it looks like something from a show home; there’s not even any washing up on the draining board. It’s strange how everything’s the reverse of our house. Not just the mirror-image room, but the tidiness and the quiet.

  Adam pulls out a chair for me at the table and I sit down.

  ‘Is your mum in?’ I ask.

  ‘She’s sleeping.’

  ‘Isn’t she well?’

  ‘She’s fine.’

  He goes over to the kettle and switches it on, gets some cups from the cupboard and puts them next to the kettle.

  Zoey screws her face up at him behind his back, then grins at me as she takes off her coat.

  ‘This house is just like yours,’ she says. ‘Except backwards.’

  ‘Sit down,’ I tell her.

  She picks up the mushrooms from the table, opens the bag and sniffs. ‘Yuk! Are you sure these are right?’

  Adam takes them from her and carries them over to the teapot. He tips the whole lot in and pours boiling water on them. She follows him and stands watching behind his shoulder.

  ‘That doesn’t look like enough. Do you actually know what you’re doing?’

  ‘I’m not having any,’ he tells her. ‘We’ll go somewhere when they kick in. I’ll look after you both.’

  Zoey rolls her eyes at me as if that’s the most pathetic thing she’s ever heard.

  ‘I have done drugs before,’ she tells him. ‘I’m sure we don’t need a babysitter.’

  I watch his back as he stirs the pot. The chink of spoon reminds me of bed time, when Dad makes me and Cal cocoa; there’s the same thoroughness in the stirring.

  ‘You mustn’t laugh at us if we do anything silly,’ I say.

  He smiles at me over his shoulder. ‘You’re n
ot going to.’

  ‘We might,’ Zoey says. ‘You don’t know us. We might go completely crazy. Tessa’s capable of anything now she’s got her list.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Shut up, Zoey!’ I tell her.

  She sits back down at the table. ‘Oops,’ she says, though she doesn’t look sorry at all.

  Adam brings the cups over and puts them in front of us. They’re wreathed in steam and smell disgusting – of cardboard and wet nettles.

  Zoey leans over and sniffs at her cup. ‘It looks like gravy!’

  He sits down beside her. ‘It’s fine. Trust me. I put a cinnamon stick in to sweeten it up.’

  Which makes her roll her eyes at me again.

  She takes a tentative sip, swallows it down with a grimace.

  ‘All of it,’ Adam says. ‘The sooner you drink it, the sooner you’ll get high.’

  I don’t know what will happen next, but there’s something very calm about him, which seems to be contagious. His voice is the one clear thing. Drink it, he says. So we sit in his kitchen and drink brown swill and he watches us. Zoey holds her nose and takes great disgusted gulps. I just swig it down. It doesn’t really matter what I eat or drink, because nothing tastes good any more.

  We sit for a bit, talking about rubbish. I can’t really concentrate. I keep waiting for something to happen, for something to alter. Adam explains how you can tell the mushrooms are right by their pointed caps and spindly stems. He says they grow in clumps, but only in late summer and autumn. He tells us they’re legal, that you can buy them dried in certain shops. Then, because nothing is happening yet, he makes us all a normal cup of tea. I don’t really want mine, just wrap my hands round it to keep myself warm. It feels very cold in this kitchen, colder than outside. I think about asking Zoey to go and get my coat from next door, but when I try to speak, my throat constricts, as if little hands are strangling me from inside.

  ‘Is it supposed to hurt your neck?’

  Adam shakes his head.

  ‘It feels as if my windpipe’s shrinking.’

  ‘It’ll stop.’ But a flicker of fear crosses his face.

  Zoey glares at him. ‘Did you give us too much?’

  ‘No! It’ll be all right – she just needs some air.’

  But doubt has crept into his voice. I bet he’s thinking the same as me – that I’m different, that my body reacts differently, that maybe this was a mistake.

  ‘Come on, let’s get you outside.’

  I stand up and he leads me down the hallway to the front door.

  ‘Wait on the step – I’ll get you a coat.’

  The front of the house is in shadow. I stand on the step, trying to breathe deeply, trying not to panic. At the bottom of the step is a path leading to the front driveway and Adam’s mum’s car. On either side of the path is grass. For some reason the grass seems different today. It’s not just the colour, but the shortness of it, stubbled like a shaved head. As I look, it becomes increasingly obvious that both step and path are safe places to be, but that the grass is malevolent.

  I hold onto the doorknocker to make sure I don’t slip down. As I clench it, I notice that the front door has a hole in it that looks like an eye. All the wood in the door leads to this hole in spirals and knots, so it seems as if the door is sliding into itself, gathering and coming back round again. It’s a slow and subtle movement. I watch it for ages. Then I put my eye to the hole, but it’s cloudy in there, so I step back inside the hallway and close the door, and look through the hole from the other direction. The world is very different from in here, the driveway elongated into a thread.

  ‘How’s your throat?’ Adam asks as he reappears in the hallway and hands me a coat.

  ‘Have you ever looked through here?’

  ‘Your pupils are huge!’ he says. ‘We should go out now. Put the coat on.’

  It’s a parka with fur round the hood. Adam does the zip up for me. I feel like an Inuit child.

  ‘Where’s your friend?’

  For a minute I don’t know who he’s talking about; then I remember Zoey and my heart floods with warmth.

  ‘Zoey! Zoey!’ I call. ‘Come and see this.’

  She’s smiling as she comes along the hallway, her eyes deep and dark as winter.

  ‘Your eyes!’ I tell her.

  She looks at me in wonder. ‘Yours too!’

  We peer at each other until our noses touch.

  ‘There’s a rug in the kitchen,’ she whispers, ‘that’s got a whole world in it.’

  ‘It’s the same with the door. Things change shape if you look through it.’

  ‘Show me.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Adam says. ‘I don’t want to spoil the moment, but does anyone fancy a ride?’

  He gets car keys from his pocket and shows them to us. They’re amazing.

  He brushes Zoey away from the door and we step outside. He points the keys at the car and it beeps in recognition. I tread very cautiously down the step and along the path, warn Zoey to do the same, but she doesn’t hear me. She dances across the grass and seems to be fine, so maybe things are different for her.

  I get in the front of the car next to Adam; Zoey sits in the back.

  We wait for a minute, then Adam says, ‘Well, what do you think?’

  But I’m not telling him any of that.

  I notice how careful he is as he reaches for the steering wheel, as if tempting some rare animal to feed from his hand.

  He says, ‘I love this car.’

  I know what he means. Being in here is like sitting inside a fine watch.

  ‘It was my dad’s. My mum doesn’t like me driving it.’

  ‘Perhaps we should just stay here then!’ Zoey calls from the back. ‘Won’t that be fun!’

  Adam turns round to look at her. He speaks very slowly. ‘I’m going to take you somewhere,’ he says. ‘I’m just saying she won’t be very happy about it.’

  Zoey flings herself down across the back seat and shakes her head at the roof in disbelief.

  ‘Watch out with your shoes!’ he yells.

  She sits up again very quickly and thrusts a finger at him.

  ‘Look at you!’ she says. ‘You look like a dog that’s about to shit itself somewhere it shouldn’t!’

  ‘Shut up,’ he says, and it’s completely shocking to me, because I didn’t know that voice was in him.

  Zoey sinks back away from him. ‘Just drive the car, man,’ she mutters.

  I don’t even realize he’s started the engine. It’s so quiet and expensive in here, you can’t hear it at all. But as we glide down the driveway and out of the gate, the houses and gardens in our street slide by, and I’m glad. This trip will open doors for me. My dad says musicians write all their best songs when they’re high. I’m going to discover something amazing. I know I will. I’ll bring it back with me too. Like the Holy Grail.

  I open the window and hang out, my arms as well, the whole top half of me dangling. Zoey does the same in the back. Air rushes at me. I feel so awake. I see things I’ve never seen before, my fingers drawing in other lives – the pretty girl gazing at her boyfriend and wanting so much from him. The man at the bus stop raking his hair, each flake of skin shimmering as it falls to the ground, leaving pieces of himself all over this earth. The baby crying up at him, understanding the brevity and hopelessness of it all.

  ‘Look, Zoey,’ I say.

  I point to a house with its door open, a glimpse of hallway, a mother kissing her daughter. The girl hesitates on the doorstep. I know you, I think. Don’t be afraid.

  Zoey has pulled herself almost out of the car by heaving on the roof. Her feet are on the back seat, and her face has appeared alongside my window. She looks like a mermaid on the prow of a ship.

  ‘Get back in the bloody car!’ Adam shouts. ‘And get your feet off the bloody seat!’

  She sinks back inside, hooting with laughter.

  They call this stretch of road Mugger Mile. My dad’s always re
ading bits out of the local paper about it. It’s a place of random acts of violence, of poverty and despair. But as we pick up speed and other lives whip by, I see how beautiful the people are. I will die first, I know, but they’ll all join me one by one.

  We cut through the back streets. The plan, Adam says, is to go to the woods. There’s a café and a park and no one will know us.

  ‘You can go crazy there and not be recognized,’ he says. ‘It’s not too far either, so we’ll be back in time for tea.’

  ‘Are you insane?’ Zoey yells from the back. ‘You sound like Enid Blyton! I want everyone to know I’m high and I don’t want any bloody tea!’

  She heaves herself out of the window again, blowing kisses at every passing stranger. She looks like Rapunzel escaping, her hair snapping in the wind. But then Adam slams on the brakes and Zoey bangs her head hard against the roof.

  ‘Jesus!’ she screams. ‘You did that on purpose!’

  She slumps down in the back seat, rubbing her head and moaning softly.

  ‘Sorry,’ Adam says. ‘We need petrol.’

  ‘Wanker,’ she says.

  He gets out of the car, walks round the back to the nozzles and pumps. Zoey appears to be suddenly asleep, slumped in the back sucking her thumb. Maybe she’s got a concussion.

  ‘You OK?’ I ask.

  ‘He’s after you!’ she hisses. ‘He’s trying to get rid of me so he can have you all to himself. You mustn’t let him!’

  ‘I don’t think that’s true.’

  ‘Like you’d notice!’

  She stuffs her thumb back in her mouth and turns her head from me. I leave her to it, get out of the car and walk over to speak to the man at the window. He has a scar like a silver river running from his hairline all the way down his forehead to the bridge of his nose. He looks like my dead uncle Bill.

  He leans forward over his little desk. ‘Number?’ he says.

  ‘Eight.’

  He looks confused. ‘No, not eight.’

  ‘OK, I’ll be three.’

  ‘Where’s your car?’

  ‘Over there.’

  ‘The Jag?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘I don’t know its name.’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’