Luca, Son of the Morning

by Tom Anderson

  ‘I don’t care,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly. And that, is precisely why you’re in this position where other people are going to tell you what to do for a while!’ Now she was turning to face me straight on again – before spinning clean around and then walking out the door.

  The room seemed to be empty of air, as if it all poured out with her, and I waited for the buzz, the anger, the worry. But… but… Who could I try to argue with or shout at?

  The beat had gone, though. Good beat, bad beat, odd beat or new beat; they’d all disappeared from my head – maybe out the door along with her and the draught that had taken the room’s air. Or maybe they had slipped out earlier, while I was waiting between the bouts of sleep?

  You guys have to listen to me, I thought, then tried to say it through a yawn. No, no, no… But that dragging weight of sleep had found its way back in through the half-open door.

  No. No. No. You have to listen.

  I laughed, softly at myself. Listen to what? I wasn’t making any sounds. My eyelids dropped back over everything that could make a difference, and maybe – right then – that could have even been what I wanted.

  No. No. No.

  * * *

  It wasn’t long before I’d lost count of the exact day. It would be really cool to have been out of it for – I don’t know – three weeks, maybe? But the way that place got to work on you, it was probably only a few days before that total clueless feeling kicked in. Day or night, all that mattered was being somewhere you didn’t want to be.

  Slowly, they started letting me not get too zonked out so that I couldn’t speak properly. That meant only giving me something light to stop me getting the thumping heart and the short breath, and that I was, officially, according to Dr Wentloog’s notes anyway, ready to start ‘learning who I was’ – or some similar crappy psycho-phrase of his that nobody would ever want to repeat.

  I was out of bed too, showered and allowed into a side room to watch telly or read – which was far more important than my sessions of getting patronised twice daily by the doc.

  Still, it was only when Gaby and Ella walked in that I really got my first sniff of the real world. Or should I say the new real world, because I’d been right in the thick of the old one for too long – and that was half the problem. Actually, it could have just been a wake-up call because Ella was soaked in some sort of weapons-grade perfume, and had coloured her nails an extra time while waiting outside. That’s enough to make anyone switch their brain on high alert.

  ‘Wow,’ I said, when I saw who had come to visit me. ‘No!’

  For some reason, I tried to protest, even then.

  Ella led the way, though, and they came and sat up close, both of them. Gaby was trying hard to find her own meaning in the floor, but Ella wasn’t going to let her do that for long. ‘He’s ahead of you, Gabe,’ she said. ‘Not down there.’

  When Gaby looked up, she shook her head, then loosened a tear.

  ‘You are a proper muppet, LLJ’ said Ella, on the edge of laughing. ‘I wasn’t there, but these guys reckon you were on one!’

  I did more of a sniff than a laugh.

  ‘Oh, and I ain’t gonna be very serious about this stuff, LLJ. I’ll tell you that now. Yes, you’re mental. But who isn’t? Plus, that doc’s more of a prick than any teacher in Chapel Shores Comp, and if I don’t keep this light, then Gabe by here is gonna be in as deep as you.’

  Another sniff from me. ‘Thanks, Ella.’

  ‘Also, is E4 the only channel you can get in this room?’ She pointed at the TV which I hadn’t yet concentrated on enough to even notice it was on.

  ‘Er… Maybe?’

  ‘Coz if it is then I’m gonna need to move my seat. That’s Come Dine with Me, isn’t it. I get hungry watching that show. Can’t you make them turn it off?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Eh. Doesn’t matter.’ And she shifted her chair noisily round to face me. It made a grinding noise on the floor that caused Gaby to wince.

  ‘Right then,’ said Ella, sitting back again. ‘So, now you can tell me what that crap was about on Friday, and then Gabe is apologising, and then we’re telling you what we know. Bet that sounds fun?’

  ‘Kind of. Ah, there’s not much to say though… I’m fine. I wasn’t…’

  ‘Oh you were,’ said Ella, immediately. ‘But it’s the first and last time, because if it ain’t them I’ll finish you off.’

  ‘I wasn…’

  ‘Zip it,’ said Ella. ‘If you can’t tell us something sensible, then we’ll go first. Eh? Gabe? What d’you reckon?’

  ‘Uh, yeah,’ said Gaby, vacantly.

  ‘Well go on then,’ said Ella, nudging her hard.

  ‘Alright, alright,’ came the reply, and Gaby looked up. ‘Lukee, dude, Lukee… I’m so sorry. Oh, my god. This is heavy. I mean… Like… I just… You know. Sorry, like.’

  ‘That’s fine. He accepts,’ said Ella. ‘Now. We got to get shit straight for this kid ASAP or he’s gonna try and walk out the window or something, so we need him not mental, and in the clear, right now. Are we on the first floor? Is there a drop out the window?’

  ‘Ella, man, come on.’ Gaby tried to interrupt, but got nowhere.

  ‘Right, Lukee. Listen to me. If Gabe can’t fill you in, I will. Now, first things first, you are a dweeb for doing what you done. Scared the shit out of Gabe, bothered me with it. And poor Poundsey! Jeez. He almost followed you in.’

  ‘He did,’ mumbled Gaby.

  ‘Yeah, he did. Boy’s hardly gonna make it on Bondi Rescue. But, still, he tried his best, for sure. Anyway, that’s besides the point.’ Ella turned to Gaby. ‘Go on. This is your stuff. Time to get on with it. You know what I mean.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Gaby.

  ‘You promised. Don’t chicken out now.’

  ‘Luca,’ said Gaby, trying hard this time. ‘I came after you. I wanted to say sorry then. But… Ah, man.’

  ‘Yeah, man,’ mocked Ella.

  ‘Piss off,’ said Gaby.

  ‘That’s more like it. Now come on, give him a bollocking first. That helps get you going.’

  ‘Luca, you got the wrong end of the stick massively,’ said Gaby.

  ‘But did I though?’

  ‘Yes. You did. The whole way. Thing is,’ she paused and took a deep breath, before coming out with it: ‘I’ve been here before, too, see.’

  The empty space in my head, where the worry should be, tried to pulse.

  ‘You’ve been here? What d’you mean?’

  ‘Exactly that. I’ve been in here too. In this place. To stay. That doctor’s got a file to prove it if you ask him. Do I need to spell it out? I was…’

  ‘I’m leaving you two alone to do this, if it’s gonna get all girly and heavy,’ said Ella, standing up and flicking her shiny, blonde ponytail over her shoulder.

  * * *

  Of course she had. This was why those kids under the sea, and the voice that instructed them, had been trying to get us two closer. Gaby was right. I had got the wrong end of the stick – and here was why it didn’t matter one bit.

  Gabrielle Carranero, Gabe, Gabo, the artiste, the rich bitch, the girl who wouldn’t talk to me or Ella if she didn’t want to, was in the deep end, way over and above anything I knew of.

  This girl was a long-term ‘friend’ of Dr Wentloog – even if Ella didn’t like the guy.

  Missing school? The blow-out in PSE? The stuff I’d heard my mum’s friends saying but hadn’t been brave enough to ask about. The way Gaby needed to fly to the mists of Bunkers Beach with no notice at random times of day? The girl had been living with full-blown flare-ups of bad-brainitis for ages now, and she’d spotted me getting the thinkies in school way back when it first happened – when my mother had made me have that stint at home.

  ‘I bet half the p
eople we don’t like, maybe even more, get like this sometimes,’ she said. ‘Trouble is you and me only bother ourselves with it.’

  ‘But you want to bother other people now?’

  ‘Well. Kind of. Don’t you think they deserve it a bit?’

  ‘Uh…’

  ‘Ella’s a dick about it, anyway,’ said Gaby. ‘Says grow a pair and don’t go thinking this makes us special in any way, but really she’s super-sensitive. The thing is, those boys, Poundes, Skunk George and them, they never had a clue, but after what happened to you on Friday night, then when I lost it again, Ella – she’s known for a while about me – well, she laid into Joe Poundes and told him about my personal shit. Which I am still probably gonna kill her for. Even though it seems to have done one good thing for the rest of the world. Now that guy’s suddenly on the waiting list to be you and me’s best friend forever. I reckon there’s nobody on earth right now more sorry and ready to make up for their ways than him.’

  ‘Joe Poundes?’

  ‘I know, mad in’t it?’ She laughed, a sort of tired, but happy giggle. ‘They were ragging on me because they knew it got reactions, knew about my anxiety, except they just thought it was me being a brat – which is kind of fair enough if no one ever told them anything more. But that’s changed now. They don’t just know about it now, LLJ – they understand it. I reckon that Poundes boy grew up more on Friday night than he will in the next ten years.’

  Here it was – their idea of what had happened, and it made total sense too: me showing signs for months – the breathing, the nervous glances – stuff Gaby easily recognised but couldn’t psyche herself up to asking me about. Then came her losing it at Jackdaw’s house and getting even worse when she looked up and saw me right there, gawping at her.

  ‘You’re different, Lukee. It was somehow, like, so much worse to know that you were seeing it,’ she said.

  Then came her getting her head together again at the party, quickly, and realising I was probably going into a spin myself because of how she’d gone off at me. Gaby’s second chance to catch up with me that night went wrong too, then, when I appeared out of the dark as she was hugging Skunk’s older brother. Before she could call to me to say whatever she needed, she’d wobbled again herself and the rest was all too far in motion to be pulled back.

  Why couldn’t she just say? Why hadn’t she just told me about it all, before? Especially if she thought it was something we might have in common. All those afternoons in the mist at Bunkers… But then again, I hadn’t said anything either, had I? I mean, how would you bring something like that up? ‘Hey Lukee. Are you having problems in your head, like I am?’ Of course she’d never have been able to just come out with it. This was why she’d kept the weird boundaries she did.

  Anyway, after that second incident at the party – after I’d run off again – she followed me to the shore with the boys. Joe Poundes, who had only moments before said the cruellest thing to me, was now learning by the second how serious that crap could be – only to see me wade into the sea.

  But the men? Why hadn’t she seen them too? I needed to bring it up.

  She was still on the bits which didn’t matter, though.

  ‘Okay, so I’d had a slight relationship with Skunk’s bro,’ she was confessing. ‘It was, like, months before, and we were still good friends. He’s a different deal altogether from Skunk. And Joe Poundes had been hassling me for ages about it, and coming onto me in school saying I should see him sometime – like he does to all the girls. Well, like he did to all the girls, before his epiphany on Friday. Anyway, I used to put him off, and as you know I was being pretty cold to all the boys – including you. And to Ella, as well.’

  She paused, took a deep breath, and added, ‘I didn’t talk to anyone last few weeks cos I was, like, way more shaken up by the Gigi news than I let on, and then I had an episode of my own.’

  A moment of calm drifted around the room, as Gaby let me hear those last words over. Episode… Shaken up… Then she said, ‘So, anyway, Skunk, not having a clue, made up a rumour I’d done some stuff with his older brother, and then told all the boys for some reason only ever going to be understood by the moron himself. You’ll be pleased to know, by the way, that Skunk got a proper whack off his older brother later on Friday for that, after the party and after you’d been brought in. Trouble was, the damage had been done though. Those boys in our year, Poundes and them, loved winding me up about Jake George, obviously. And at that party they saw me and guessed it was a chance to rag on me again. Poundes went to up to me and took the piss, and the rest you know.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Well, yeah. Oh, except that Skunk’s older brother took over to calm me down. Like I said, he’s a nice guy, and he sort of knew the deal with my moods, too. So we’re hugging coz we’re dealing with some stuff, and remembering breaking up but still not bitter and he’s telling me his little bro’s gonna get it! Then you show…’

  ‘But, Gabe, I was coming back because…’ The men, the men! Gigi himself! I had to tell her.

  ‘So we saw what happened at the beach,’ she explained. ‘You were standing around and then just headed into the water, so from somewhere the police got called – and Joe Poundes shit himself because you had totally gone under. Then he went in himself and was flapping around for ages before he pulled you out, and you were, like, floating in the sea and shivering like you were already half dead. Jesus, Lukee. It was intense, man. Like a mirror going up to me, the way I’ve felt a million times, and I was not into it, not one bit.’

  ‘But Gabe, Gabe…’

  ‘Man, Poundes feels terrible! The last few days that guy has been so keen to find out if you’re okay, it’s unreal. So you’ve done all of Chapel Shores year Elevens a favour in one way. All the bad in Poundes has taken a hike.’

  ‘Gabe. Listen. Gabe. I can’t believe you didn’t see something else, too? Come on, think. You’ve painted him just like it was. Come on, I know you must have been close to seeing it. Or hearing his voice, then, even if you couldn’t see him.’

  ‘See what, Lukee?’

  ‘Him!’

  * * *

  ‘Ha. It’s beautiful! It’s so… so… simple. The best things always are, eh, Lukee? And there’s me thinking I did those sketches only for me.’

  ‘Except you did show one to…’

  ‘Well, yeah, but that’s you. I didn’t plan to share it at the time I did, though.’

  ‘Really?’

  She took the news about Gigi Carranero like it had been told to her by Dr Wentloog in one of those meetings he would have with us in the weeks to come – you know, like it was something interesting to get told about your own brain, or your own world, but nothing really major. To her, this kind of announcement seemed… well, pretty straightforward. As if she’d sort of known it all along.

  ‘The pictures I painted,’ she said. ‘They were coz something flashed through my head when I tried to imagine him. But that was definitely how he looked. I knew it at the time. Something kept telling me I’d got him right – as if I’d seen him somewhere. Wow. Can you imagine how much it would have cooked Dr Wentloog’s little mind if I’d miraculously sketched the same figure as you were seeing – and Wentloog had found out? God, I’m glad I only ever made up a load of woolly stuff when he was making me keep a logbook. Gigi, though! Of course it was him! Is he still around, d’you reckon? Or have you scared him the hell away from Chapel Shores for ever and ever?’

  ‘Dunno,’ I said. ‘We can always go out one night to see?’

  ‘No,’ she laughed. ‘We will not!’ Then she winked. ‘Well, not for a while, anyway. And not without Ella, or someone else who’s not mental like we are.’

  ‘It wouldn’t happen for Ella though,’ I said. ‘They’d stay in the sea, or in the dune.’

  ‘Then it wouldn’t be happening at all,’ said Gabe. ‘If she doesn’t see
it, we shouldn’t be seeing it. Plus. How do we know that loop under the sea isn’t going through the Underworld anyway?’

  ‘We don’t. But why would it? I mean, look. I’m safe.’

  She laughed.

  ‘Plus,’ I said. ‘Aren’t they maybe showing themselves just to the people who are willing to see?’

  ‘You think Ella wouldn’t be up for seeing nineteen ghosts including the legendary Gigi? She’ll try anything once.’

  ‘Yeah, but she might not believe,’ I said.

  ‘True dat.’

  ‘Gabe. You believe me, don’t you?’ I asked.

  She took a short breath in, then blew it out hard through her nose, shuffling in her seat and fixing me with her eyes.

  ‘Hell yes,’ she said. ‘I’m with you all the way to the brink, LL Cool J.’

  I looked towards the window, to see if outside had started to look more real again yet.

  ‘Oh, but one thing I do need to tell you,’ she said. ‘Just some advice.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Luca, don’t ever tell them, out there, that version that you just told me. I believe you, but if you do tell Wentloog this, then they’ll cert you for sure.’

  I smiled. ‘Sensible all the way,’ I said. ‘I’m not that far off it. I can see it’s a no-brainer not to give them the real deal.’

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘But I’m getting Ella back in so we can hatch a plan for tuning your old man, though. He’s in a pickle if you ask me. That Alex kid – he’s got to be talking about the same stuff for sure as that knock-off gold your dad and that cheeser mate of his are about to buy.’

  ‘Jeff, you mean.’

  ‘Yeah. Jeff. Right, Lukee. We need a plan of attack there, and soon. Poppa Lincoln’s your after-lunch meeting, and it’s gonna be a career-breaker.’

  ‘Fine. Whatever. Thanks.’

  She was standing up to leave.

  ‘Oh, Gabe,’ I asked, as she took her first step back.