The Taming of Lilah May

by Vanessa Curtis

  It’s my turn to give her a sharp look.

  Jay’s never mentioned girls. I’ve never seen him hang out with any either. I don’t much like the idea of him confiding in other girls.

  He’s supposed to confide in me.

  ‘Don’t think so,’ I say, but Mum’s getting up and stretching. She’s got dark rings beneath her eyes and her blonde hair is sticking up in short peaks where she’s run her hands through it all night.

  ‘I think I’d better stay at home today and ask Jenny to fill in for me,’ she says. Jenny is Mum’s one member of staff. She does the children’s entertaining when Mum can’t make it. ‘I can’t concentrate on anything until he comes home.’

  She goes upstairs for a shower, and I gulp my tea and flick through a magazine at the kitchen table, like I’ve taken Mum’s place and now it’s me who’s waiting for Jay to get home.

  About two hours later, Mum’s outside pruning pots of petunias to try and keep herself from panicking, and I’ve had a bath and come downstairs to do homework at the kitchen table, when there’s a very quiet click at the front door and a key turns in the lock in a way which makes me think that the person turning it doesn’t want to be seen or heard. So I get up and go and stand in the hall with my hands on my hips like an angry parent.

  Jay jumps when he sees me standing there.

  ‘Jeez, Liles, you nearly gave me a heart attack,’ he says.

  He looks dreadful.

  His face is chalk-white and his hair has stopped being shiny and flippy and just lies across his pale forehead in dank, black, greasy strands. His eyes are empty and staring, and his black jeans are stained with something white.

  There’s that smell coming off him. I can’t work out what it is, except that it doesn’t smell like Jay.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mum’s in the garden,’ I say. ‘But she’s been up all night waiting for you.’

  Jay shakes his head.

  ‘Christ,’ he says. ‘They treat me like a little kid. That’s when they can be bothered to actually stay in the house for more than an hour.’

  ‘Maybe they worry because you don’t tell them where you’re going,’ I suggest, but it’s the wrong thing to say.

  Jay pushes past me and bolts upstairs like a crazed black antelope or something.

  ‘Jay!’ I call after him. ‘Do you want some breakfast?’

  There’s no reply.

  He looks like he hasn’t eaten for a week.

  I stand in the kitchen feeling like a stupid little sister, and then Mum comes in and takes one look at my face and rushes upstairs, and there’s one hell of a row, which ends with Dad being hauled out of Morley Zoo and summoned home with a face like an angry lion. And there’s a ‘family conference’, which is dreadful, because Jay won’t speak and just sits sunk in his chair with his hair falling over his face, and I feel like a spare part and can’t speak either. And Mum and Dad just go on and on firing endless questions at Jay, with their voices getting higher and more hysterical, and he won’t answer any of them.

  That evening he stays up in his room.

  Mum fiddles around with her uneaten spaghetti, winding strings of meaty pasta around her fork and then letting them unravel again in an anti-clockwise direction, until Dad reaches out, takes her fork and puts it on her plate, like she’s a little child.

  ‘Lilah,’ he says.

  Uh-oh. I know what’s coming, and I don’t like it.

  ‘We need to know what Jay’s going through,’ he says. ‘Obviously something is wrong. But he won’t talk to us. Maybe he’ll talk to you?’

  I’m peeling the lid off a raspberry yoghurt, but I look up at that.

  ‘He doesn’t really talk to me either, any more,’ I say. ‘Not about anything important, anyway.’

  ‘But you used to be so close,’ says Mum. Her eyes are wet with tears. ‘Won’t you at least try?’

  I put my yoghurt down uneaten and scrape back my chair.

  ‘I’ll try,’ I say. ‘But he’s probably just going to yell at me.’

  Jay doesn’t yell at me.

  He doesn’t get the chance.

  I go up to his room and this time, for some reason, I decide not to knock.

  There’s a part of me that’s already starting to feel angry.

  I’m not an angry child yet, so it’s like a baby alien has just set up home in my stomach and started waving his arms and legs about. It feels strange.

  I’m thinking about Mum’s sad face and Dad having to leave a pregnant lioness about to give birth to lots of helpless little baby lion cubs, and about how every weekend is now dominated by us all worrying about what Jay’s going to do or not do, and a little part of me is stirring up and feeling vivid and alive with anger. And it’s wiping out all the good memories of the holiday on the boat and our childhood and all the games we used to play. So I don’t even think of knocking politely on my brother’s door, I just grip the handle and barge in.

  It takes my eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom.

  There’s music blaring out and the window is shut, so the room stinks.

  Jay’s on the floor with his back up against the bed and his head drooping down towards his chest, and when I come in he kind of looks up, but as if in slow motion, and his eyes are frowning at me like he doesn’t recognise me. And then he speaks in a voice that sounds as if he’s drunk about twenty cans of lager, and he says, ‘Get the hell out of my bedroom, little girl.’ His voice is low and menacing, like the rumble of a train in the distance that’s about to speed up and mow me down, so I start to back towards the door, but by then it’s too late, and I’ve already seen it.

  There’s a tin on his lap, and some sort of needle lying next to him, and Jay’s got a thin, black band pulled tight around his soft, white arm.

  I’ve seen people doing it on television.

  I know what it is.

  ‘You tell Mum and Dad, you’re dead,’ says my brother in this new voice I don’t recognise. ‘Got it?’

  I stumble out of the room backwards.

  And I spend the night alone in my room.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  When we go and report the strange call from Jay’s phone, the police aren’t very helpful or sympathetic.

  ‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ they say. ‘We’ll trace the call, but to be honest, anybody could have that mobile and be making calls on it.’

  ‘But why would they call somebody from Jay’s band, unless they were Jay?’ says Mum. ‘We’ve got to have some hope. It’s been over two years,’ she says, more to herself than to us.

  She’s holding my hand, but her nails are digging into my palm and her wedding ring is cutting into the side of my finger.

  ‘You’d be surprised how many idiots there are out there, Mrs May,’ says one of the policemen, a young guy with dark hair and serious brown eyes. He eyes my mother’s weird clown costume as he speaks. ‘Some people will do anything when they’re bored.’

  We drive home again in silence.

  The tense air in the car has gone, to be replaced by a big deflated feeling, like we’ve all been blown up and popped with a giant pin.

  ‘This sucks,’ I mutter from the back seat, where I’m slumped against the window.

  ‘Yes, Lilah, thank you for putting it so eloquently, as usual,’ says Dad with a huge sigh. He’s driving as if he can’t be bothered, tipping the wheel back and forth with two fingers and leaning right back against the headrest.

  I scowl in the dark, even though they can’t see me, and mutter ‘Seagullvians,’ to myself.

  ‘Well, sorry you’re left with your horrid daughter when all you want is your lovely son,’ I say, although I know I shouldn’t.

  I can’t help myself sometimes.

  The anger just kind of takes hold of me and bursts out of my mouth, even if I press my lips really hard together.

  ‘You’re obviously going through your Terrible Teens,’ says Mum. Her voice is broken and thick with tears. ‘Jay was going through them as well, L
ilah. I’m not saying he was perfect. Far from it.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I mutter, from where I’ve sunk down into my coat so that only my eyes are peering out. ‘Whatever.’

  Mum sighs and blows her nose. She hates my over-use of slang expressions from American chat shows.

  The thing is, she’s right. Jay was a nightmare just before he went missing. But now that’s all been brushed aside because all we want is for him to come home. Whereas I’m still at home, still getting told off and bossed about and ordered to do homework and tidy my room, and I’ve got no freedom to go out at night now, thanks to my lovely big brother and his, like, great idea of going missing for two years.

  When we get home, Dad goes upstairs to his computer, Mum locks herself in the bedroom and sticks her yoga music on and I lie on my bed and stare up at the glow stars for hours. I decide that I’m going to go mad if I don’t speak to somebody, so I think about Bindi and then realise it’s half past midnight and way too late for her to still be up. So I reach for my mobile and dial another number.

  Adam answers the phone straight away, like he was holding it in his hand.

  ‘Hey, Lilah. Wassup?’

  I can’t speak for a moment.

  It’s because his voice is deep and kind, even after our embarrassing non-date the other week. And I don’t hear a lot of that at home at the moment, so whenever anybody’s kind to me I start filling up with pathetic girly tears that won’t fall down my face, and I feel about six years old.

  ‘Lilah?’ says Adam. ‘Are you still there?’

  I nod, which is stupid because he can’t see me.

  ‘Hi,’ I manage, in a tiny whisper. ‘Tell me what you’re doing.’

  Most people would think this weird, but Adam is used to my weirdness.

  ‘Well,’ he says, and I can picture him glancing around his bedroom. ‘Before I answered this call, I was texting a mate. Before that, I was listening to the new Killers album on iTunes. And before that, I was stuffing a doughnut down my gob, and trying to do logarithms. How about you?’

  ‘Mmm, you know,’ I manage. ‘Went down to the police station. Somebody made a call from Jay’s mobile. But they don’t reckon it was him.’

  I can tell by the silence that Adam’s shocked.

  ‘Shit, Lilah,’ he says in the end. ‘I’m so sorry. That must have brought it all back again.’

  I’m silent again for a moment. The thing is, nothing ever brings it all back again, because it never went away in the first place.

  I can’t ever stop thinking about Jay.

  And how it was entirely my fault.

  I’m too sad to be angry.

  The police call us the next day.

  They’ve traced Jay’s phone. Some strange bloke had found it in the street and had pressed a dialled number by mistake.

  Mum’s white with disappointment and Dad’s pacing up and down in the kitchen in the manner of one of his lions.

  I’m off school for a day because none of us slept a wink the night before.

  ‘But I don’t understand,’ says Dad. ‘Why would his phone end up in the street?’

  Mum and I are silent.

  Whatever the reason, it doesn’t sound like something we’d want to know about.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Dad comes upstairs for another Taming Lilah session on a Thursday after school.

  I’m already feeling pretty cross, because although Bindi liked her bangles, our friendship is still all cautious and nervy and not like it was before, and I see her whispering with Adam Carter sometimes during break, and I just know that they are discussing me and how annoying I am, and when I see them with their heads bent close together, I go all shivery and get a big pang deep in my stomach.

  So I’m up in my bedroom trying to get lost in schoolwork, but as always there’s this bad feeling right at the middle of everything I do, like the black bit you have to scrape out from the middle of a clean white potato. I just can’t shift it.

  Dad taps on my door and comes in without bothering to wait for my reply.

  He’s wearing a thick black jacket, which is a bit odd, as our house is heated up like a tropical greenhouse due to Mum’s inability to tolerate any cold weather at all.

  ‘How ARE you?’ he begins. I poke my tongue out at him and we both laugh a little bit, but then I remember the afternoon I’ve just had at school and I begin to bang the back of my head against the wall, not really all that hard, but just enough to show Dad that I’m not at my best.

  ‘That bad, huh?’ says Dad. He comes over and sits on the foot of the bed.

  ‘Well,’ he says. ‘When the big boys at the zoo get angry, there are a number of things we try. Firstly there’s exercise, like you did last time. And secondly we use something called “the distraction method”.’

  I give him a mournful look.

  ‘I’m so not in the mood for being distracted,’ I say. ‘And if you’re about to suggest that we play a board game, then forget it.’

  My family have this gross love of playing games. I hate them. They’re not called ‘bored games’ for nothing. Just the tap-tap of the little plastic pieces around the board is enough to get my anger prickles starting off again.

  ‘It depends what the distraction is, surely?’ says Dad. He’s got a worrying smirk on his face, like he knows something I don’t.

  But I’m kind of interested now, and I’ve stopped banging my head on the wall.

  ‘What?’ I say. ‘Could you just tell me, please? I can’t cope with all this mystery stuff.’

  Dad puts his hand inside his odd black puffy jacket and pulls something out.

  ‘Oh!’ I say. My eyes are wide as frisbees.

  Dad passes it into my trembling hands.

  Two very big brown eyes look up at me, and a small pink tongue comes out and starts to pant.

  ‘He’s yours,’ says Dad. ‘But there are two conditions. Number one, you don’t ever, ever take out your anger on this puppy. OK?’

  ‘Of course,’ I say. I’ve melted into a pile of slush in the corner of the duvet. I can’t stop gazing down at the bundle of golden fur in my arms.

  ‘And number two,’ says Dad, ‘when you get angry, you take this little animal for a good run. That way, he gets his exercise and you get to feel better. Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed,’ I murmur. I’ve buried my head in soft puppy fur.

  ‘And one more thing,’ he says. ‘Your mother might work with children and animals for a living, but she isn’t actually that keen on them as a combination. So try to keep him and you out from under her feet, OK?’

  I smile a bit at that.

  He gets up and goes over the door.

  He looks back at us on the bed when he gets there and he gives me a big wink.

  ‘Dad,’ I say, as he heads off downstairs. My voice is cracked with joy. ‘Thanks.’

  I spend the next three weeks walking Benjie, playing with Benjie and rushing home from school to stroke Benjie. He’s adorable.

  Mum mutters a bit about puppy puddles on the floor and fur all over her best white sofa, but she can see that Benjie is making me happy, so she grits her teeth and gives him a rather forced pat from time to time.

  And I kind of feel less angry. I’m even OK at school, and things with Bindi are a bit better too, although I still get the feeling there’s something she’s not telling me.

  Then one night a policeman comes to our front door just as we’re eating supper.

  I hear his low voice on the front door stop and then Dad shouts out, ‘Oh no! Oh God, no!’ and Mum leaps up from her chair in the kitchen and rushes to his side and her voice rises up into a panicking shriek, and I go dizzy and clutch onto the sides of my chair while the kitchen seems to whizz around in a circle.

  Dad comes back into the kitchen with a grey face, and he’s staggering like he’s seen a ghost.

  He sits down next to me.

  He takes hold of my hand.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The night after
I find Jay slumped against his bed with the needle, I don’t go to sleep at all.

  I think I know what he was doing, but just to make sure, I log onto Dad’s PC in the dead of night and google what I saw.

  When I switch off the computer, I’m feeling like I’m in the middle of a nightmare.

  How did this happen?

  How has my lovely, fun big brother ended up hooked on drugs?

  I sit on the edge of my bed all night and I think.

  From time to time, bits of information pop up into my head, and I realise that Jay’s been lost and lonely for quite a long time.

  Some of the boys at school have started to laugh at him for having black hair and a white face and being obsessed with guitars.

  He didn’t tell me that, but I overheard a bunch of them talking outside school and using Jay’s name, so I ducked behind a wall and crept closer so that I could eavesdrop.

  ‘Reckons he’s going to be a rock star,’ said one boy.

  ‘Yeah, he reckons he’s really hard,’ said another.

  ‘Jay May, superstar,’ said yet another. ‘NOT. Have you seen his eyes? Wears more make-up than my mum.’

  ‘He’s such a loser,’ said the first boy.

  I think about all the times that Jay and I have been on our own at home while Dad’s been on emergency call at the zoo and Mum’s been out entertaining kids, and I realise that having a little sister to talk to hasn’t been enough for Jay.

  This thought hits me like a flying boot.

  He’s lonely, I think. No friends, no parents, only me.

  And I wasn’t enough to stop him doing drugs.

  It’s so awful realising this that I spend the entire night perched on the edge of my bed, chewing my nails and wondering what on earth to do next.

  Jay warned me not to tell Mum and Dad

  If I tell them, he’ll never speak to me again.

  But if I don’t?

  What will happen to him then?

  In the end, I need to talk to somebody about it, so I wait until it’s breakfast time the next day and I text Bindi and ask her to meet me early before school.

  ‘If it’s about that English essay forget it,’ she says as we walk towards the school gates together. ‘I didn’t even understand the question.’