Sometimes I worry that if I wasn’t the only person Jake’s age living in the village, if our mums hadn’t brought us together when we were babies, he wouldn’t even notice me.
‘Poems are for every occasion Jake,’ Miss Pierce looks straight at him with her sharp, blue eyes. ‘And in the case of the First World War, poetry was one of the only ways that the men could truly express what they were going through.’
Jake has some teachers totally wound round his little finger, but Miss Pierce wins every time. And Jake doesn’t mind because he likes her just as much as I do. She’s one of those teachers who cares more about pupils than about impressing the Head or his millions of deputies, which means she actually talks to us like she’s interested in hearing what we have to say rather than waiting for us to come up with the right answer.
‘Don’t we have textbooks for that?’ Jake asks.
‘Textbooks tell us facts, Jake, poems tell us the truth. And they bring us together: they teach us about our common humanity, about how the past and the present are connected, about how a man sitting in a trench a hundred years ago writing a love letter to his girlfriend back home might feel the very same thing as you feel when you pass notes to Amy under the desk.’
The class erupts in laughter.
That’s another thing about Miss Pierce: she always knows exactly what’s going on.
Jake blushes and stares down at his desk.
Amy grins stupidly because she’s got attention, even though she probably doesn’t understand what she got attention for.
‘These two men have given us the greatest treasures from the First World War,’ Miss Pierce says, switching on the projector. The black and white faces of two young men flash onto the whiteboard. ‘Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon.’
‘Didn’t they meet in a loony bin?’ Matt calls out from the back of the class.
‘They met at Craiglockhart Hospital, Matt, where soldiers were recovering from shell-shock.’
I’ve heard that term before but I’ve never really got my head round it. I put my hand up.
‘Yes, Feather?’
‘What’s shell-shock?’
Matt laughs from the back of the class. ‘It’s when you get shocked by a shell falling on your head!’
‘Shut up!’ Jake calls back.
Miss Pierce doesn’t tell Jake to mind his language, like other teachers would. It’s her opinion that there are times when colourful language is necessary and, obviously, telling Matt to get lost is the perfect occasion.
‘It’s a good question, Feather, and something that psychiatrists are still trying to understand today. Matt is right in so far as there’s an initial shock, when a soldier experiences the devastating effects of a bomb or, more likely, days and days of bombardment in the trenches. But it’s more than that. It’s the way that bomb echoes through a person’s mind days and weeks and months and sometimes years after the trauma.’ Miss Pierce looks up at the faces of the two young men on the projector and her eyes go sad. ‘We carry the past with us, and sometimes that past is so very, very sad that it haunts us and damages us.’
The class goes really quiet and then Miss Pierce hands out the poems and for a whole half-hour I get lost in Miss Pierce’s words and the words from the poems and thoughts about the past and how we ‘carry it with us’.
Miss Pierce’s lessons are the one thing that make going to school bearable. She’s the only teacher who gets it, about me finding it hard to read rather than just not wanting to read. There are lots of ways to learn about the world besides reading books, she said to me once, and I try to remember that whenever I get down about not being very good at school.
By the time the last bell goes, I’m bursting to leave. I head straight down the corridor to the main doors but then something catches my peripheral vision. It’s the guy from this morning – he’s heading into the counsellor’s office. And I get that same warm feeling I got this morning, like I’ve known him my whole life. Maybe that soul-mate thing is true, that there are people walking around in the world that you’re just meant to meet.
I look back at the counsellor’s office. No one goes to see Miss Tippet, not voluntarily. She has coffee breath and BO and makes you draw pictures of your feelings like you’re a four-year-old. Jake got sent to Coffee Breath when his parents divorced and he stopped working.
I reckon that if I wait out here for the guy to come out, I can think of an excuse to start a conversation. I try not to stand too close to the door in case he comes out and thinks I’m eavesdropping. The doors at the Academy are paper-thin, probably because the government ran out of money at the end of the building project. All the trimmings are cheap: door handles keep falling off and light fixtures hang off the ceiling because they won’t stick to the plasterboard ceiling and the tables and chairs are wobbly.
Out of the corner of my eye I notice Jake and Amy coming down the corridor arm in arm.
‘See you later,’ Amy says, kissing Jake’s cheek but looking at me the whole time.
She always finds excuses to leave when she bumps into me. I think she’s worried that because I’m friends with Jake my lack of coolness will seep through him and taint her shiny image. I bet she wishes that someone would drop a bomb on me and that I’d just disappear out of Jake’s life.
I wait for Amy to join her friends at the other end of the corridor and then I turn to Jake and say:
‘He’s in there.’
‘Who?’
‘The guy from this morning, on the bus.’
‘He’s with Miss Tippet?’
‘Yep.’
‘Wow, what did he do to deserve that?’
A second later the door flies open and the guy comes out. He can’t have been in there for more than a few minutes – maybe he took one sniff of Miss Tippet and decided against the counselling session.
‘Hi,’ I say. It comes out lame-sounding.
He nods and heads down the corridor.
‘You just started at Newton Academy?’ Jake calls after him.
The guy stops and turns round. ‘Yeah.’
Yeah. An American accent. And then my brain pings: the cases on Rev Cootes’s step with the American Airlines labels. This guy is staying with Rev Cootes? No way.
‘Want to go to get a coffee?’ I ask him.
Jake shoots me a glance, which says: Since when did you start drinking coffee?
‘Maybe another time,’ the guy says.
‘You live in Willingdon?’ I burst out, desperate to get some information out of him before he goes. I need to know whether I’ve seen him before or whether I’m being totally delusional.
‘Yeah. For now.’ He looks at his watch. His wrists are so thin you can see all the bones.
Maybe he’s got some kind of cancer, that’s what makes people really thin, isn’t it? But then, if he had cancer, why would he have moved in with Rev Cootes and started school at Newton Academy?
‘I really have to go,’ he says.
I wonder why he’s in such a hurry; it can’t be to go and spend time with Rev Cootes.
‘See you around then,’ I say.
We watch him walk away.
Jake smiles and shakes his head.
‘What?’
‘You’ll scare him away.’
‘I only asked him if he wanted a coffee.’
‘You made it sound like a marriage proposal.’
‘I did not.’
Jake rolls his eyes. ‘I’m just saying, you’ve got to chill a bit.’
I look back down the corridor.
‘It’ll be nice to have someone else around, that’s all,’ I say. ‘Besides us, I mean.’
Jake furrows his brow and I can tell he’s a bit offended. Which is kind of off considering he’s always leaving me to be with Amy. But Amy aside, we’ve always agreed that it being the two of us is just fine, that we don’t need anyone else. But we both know that Willingdon can get lonely – and boring.
Willingdon is famous for four things, (non
e of which makes life any more interesting for Jake and me:)
1. Being the smallest village in Britain.
2. Hosting the Willingdon Waltz.
3. Having a Lido (that closed down years and years ago).
4. Mum. Mum’s size.
‘I reckon he’s in Year 12,’ Jake says. ‘I saw him going into a Year 12 Form Room earlier today. I don’t think he’ll be interested in hanging around with us.’
‘Well, as long as he’s not middle-aged or pushing a Zimmer frame, I don’t care,’ I say.
I watch the guy disappearing through the front doors at the end of the corridor. I can feel Jake watching him too.
Miss Tippet waddles out of her office holding a manila file. I crane my neck to see the label: CLAY COOTES.
Jake must see it too because he whispers: ‘Cootes? Wow, poor guy. He definitely needs saving.’
Maybe, if he’s related to Rev Cootes, we have met before.
‘Hi, Miss Tippet.’ I smile at her because I feel sorry for her, even if she’s smelly and hasn’t got a clue about teenagers.
A mix of sticky deodorant and sweaty armpit wafts off Miss Tippet.
‘You’re seeing Clay Cootes?’ Jake asks her.
If there’s one thing Jake and me have in common it’s this: we pick at things until we get to the truth.
Miss Tippet squishes the files she’s carrying up against her boobs, which makes me want to look away.
‘You know my client details are confidential.’ She sounds like she’s reading from a manual.
‘Well, we’re his friends,’ I say, ‘we look out for him.’
She raises her eyebrows. ‘You do?’
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘we hang out with him all the time.’
Miss Tippet raises her bushy eyebrows. ‘Clay has only just arrived.’
So I was right, that was his suitcase.
‘Yeah, well, since he’s arrived, we’ve been spending time together. He’s our new best friend,’ Jake says. He’s joining in to make me feel better about liking Clay, which makes me remember why I love him so much. He beams at Miss Tippet in his usual charming, handsome way. I sometimes wonder whether it’s weird, that I find Jake handsome when I don’t fancy him; when he’s basically my brother.
The counsellor drops her shoulders. ‘Well, I must say I’m relieved to hear that. I was worried Clay might be a bit alone, you know, living with his grandfather, being new to the school. Though I imagine his mother still has contacts in Willingdon.’
His mother lived in Willingdon? That means Mum and Dad and Steph must know her. That means my gut feeling might be right after all.
I tilt my head to one side. ‘Yes, must be hard for him.’ And then I take a gamble, hoping I got the accent right. ‘America is so different…’
She nods. ‘New York is another world. Poor Clay is a long way from home.’
I hear Jake take in a sharp breath. He loves New York. He wants to do make-up for those zombie-invasion films he loves and there’s a school in New York where they teach it. He’d have to get a scholarship though because Steph couldn’t afford the fees, not in a million years.
‘You’d think his parents would have found him some help out there, don’t you?’ Miss Tippet goes on.
Counsellors are meant to let you do the talking, right? Well, once Miss Tippet gets going, it’s like one of those taps Dad gets called out to fix: drip, drip, drip… until you think your head’s going to implode.
She adjusts her bra strap under her nylon jumper. ‘I mean, therapists are as common as dentists out there.’
‘Yes, they are.’ Jake nods earnestly.
‘We help him,’ I say to Miss Tippet. ‘With his… you know…’
‘Oh, I’m so glad.’ Miss Tippet puts her hand to her chest.
So he is sick. Though he looks more like he’d need a doctor than a counsellor kind of sick.
Miss Tippet leans in. Sweat. Coffee breath.
‘I don’t imagine his grandfather understands much about these things,’ she adds.
Jake and I both wait for her to say more but she readjusts her files and turns to go.
‘He’s lucky to have you.’ She looks from me to Jake and then she waddles off down the corridor.
If there’s one thing Miss Tippet is right about, it’s that he looks like he could do with a friend. And maybe he’ll keep me company when Jake’s off with Amy. I’m going to make sure I get to know Clay.
11
‘Mum!’
I tumble through the door, dump my swim bag and my school bag in the hall and run into Mum’s room.
‘We have to hurry or we’ll be late.’ I flick my wet hair over my shoulders – the ends frozen into icicles.
I squeezed in a swim practice after school and Steph said my technique hadn’t been this good in months and that if I kept it up I’d be in with a real chance of making it through the local trials and then the regionals. But right now I’m focused on something else. Ever since Mitch came round I haven’t been able to stop thinking about how once I get Mum to the Slim Skills group, everything will start to get better.
‘Steph and Jake are outside with the people carrier. She’s taken the seats out of the back so there’s loads of room.’
‘Steph’s here?’ Mum asks.
I didn’t tell Mum until the last minute; I didn’t want her to use it as an excuse to back out of coming. Plus, by forcing them together I’m hoping they’ll talk and make up.
‘I’d rather your dad took us,’ Mum says.
‘Dad’s out on a job.’
‘Fine,’ she mumbles, though her tone says the opposite. I wish she’d see how much Steph loves her and how much effort she’s going to.
I run up to my bedroom and come back carrying a massive bin liner.
‘I’ve got a surprise, Mum.’
‘What on earth?’
I pull out the gigantic, blue coat I got from the Age UK shop in Newton. I shake it out and lay it on the floor in front of Mum.
‘I thought you should have something smart to wear for your first trip out.’ I hold it up to Mum. ‘I measured it. And the colour will bring out your eyes.’ I take a breath. ‘Plus, it’s to celebrate you losing all those pounds. Did Nurse Heidi come again today?’
Mum nods.
‘And?’
‘She said I’m doing well,’ Mum says.
Mum told me she’s lost another stone since she’s been back from hospital. I can’t see it yet, but I guess that’s normal. It will take stones and stones before we notice a real difference.
‘You’ll see, Mum, as you lose weight and feel healthier, you’ll start enjoying clothes again. We’ll go shopping together—’
‘Maybe,’ Mum says.
All the bounce Mum had the other day when Mitch Banks came round has disappeared. I guess it’s normal that she’s nervous about the meeting.
‘Here, try it on.’ I guide Mum’s arms through the sleeves. One of Mum’s wrists gets stuck in the cuff.
She takes in a big breath.
‘I don’t think it’ll fit—’
‘Just push your arm through harder, Mum.’
Mum breathes out and the seam between her shoulder blade rips.
I take the coat away and stuff it back into the bin liner.
‘It doesn’t matter, Mum.’ I give her a kiss. ‘It’s not that cold out.’
I measured Mum’s sweatshirts really carefully to make sure the coat would fit. I don’t understand.
Mum glances at the slit in the lounge curtains. In a few months it will be spring. And then summer. Mum doesn’t talk much about the time before she stopped going out but once she mentioned that she liked summer: the picnics in Willingdon Park and everyone out on The Green. Mum hasn’t felt the sun on her skin for over a decade.
Mum leans towards the window.
‘Who’s that?’ she asks, pointing through the slit.
I open the curtains a little and look out. The vicarage is across The Green, bang opposite our c
ottage. I notice Clay standing by the front door in running gear. His legs look so thin poking out of his shorts that I get a stab of pain in my chest. I get how Mum put on weight but I can’t get my head around how someone can get so thin. You have to eat to stay alive, don’t you? Standing there in his running gear, Clay barely looks alive at all.
‘That’s Clay,’ I say. ‘He’s American.’
Mum takes in a sharp breath.
‘Mum?’
‘How long’s he been here?’
If Miss Tippet is right about Clay’s mum still having contacts in Willingdon, maybe she knows Mum and Dad.
‘I’m not sure… a few days? Do you know him?’
Mum shakes her head.
Maybe she’s just worried about there being another person in Willingdon to gawp at her. I don’t know what the word for people-phobic is but Mum’s got that phobia along with her water phobia and her hospital phobia and her going-out phobia.
I want to tell her that I like him and that he’s the first real-life (rather than TV) guy I’ve seen that have made my insides flip. Because I always tell Mum what I’m feeling. But she doesn’t seem in the mood.
‘I think he’s nice…’ I try out.
‘He’s too old for you.’
Which is a really weird comment for Mum to make. You know how I said that Mum was better than any of the other mums around because she takes time to listen and because she doesn’t have all these unrealistic expectations of me and because she laughs at the same stuff I do and sees the world in the same way? Well, that means she doesn’t shoot me down when I say I like something. Especially when that something is a guy.
‘Too old for what? I just said he was nice.’
‘You’ve got Jake,’ Mum says, wiping the back of her hand across her brow. She’s gone into convection heater mode.
I put the bin bag to one side and wheel over Mum’s chair.
‘Come on, Mum.’ I slip my arm under hers. ‘Let’s get outside, the fresh air will make you feel better.’
I’ve got a technique for getting her from armchair to wheelchair. Only today, it doesn’t seem to work. Mum’s body feels like this big bag of bricks. It won’t budge.
Wishbones Page 7
