Still Falling

by Wilkinson, Sheena;

  I open my eyes again. ‘No. I just need to sleep it off. I’ll be fine in a few hours.’

  As always my heart sinks when we turn into Sandra’s street. My street now. It’s a bit miserable, a lot of concrete and the gardens are titchy. At least Sandra’s has flowers in it – not bins and old bottles like the one next door. A few tattered flags, left over from summer, droop from the lampposts.

  A bedraggled skinny black kitten is sitting in the middle of Sandra’s path.

  ‘There’s that wee cat again,’ Sandra says. ‘It’s been hanging round for a few days.’ She bends down but the kitten scarpers.

  By the time I get to my room – refusing another cup of tea; Sandra is a great believer in the healing powers of tea – the headache and the tiredness have blotted out everything else.

  Sandra calls up the stairs, ‘Leave me out your uniform so I can give it a wash through.’ She doesn’t mention the words trousers or wet and I think vaguely as I pull everything off and leave it in a heap outside the bedroom door that that’s a brownie point for her. I don’t know if this is just the honeymoon period or if she and Bill are going to keep on being this nice.

  The plain blue duvet still smells of washing powder. I haven’t been here long enough for it to smell of me. When I close my eyes I see the ring of shocked, scared faces; chair legs; human legs; dust skittering in the sun on the polished wooden floor tiles. And then the girl’s face, calm and still with brown eyes. Her wide slow smile. Her hand on my sleeve. The new warm smell of her cardigan.

  Esther

  I dodge through crowds of boys playing football and girls standing in groups to find a space on the wall outside the library for a quiet read. But no sooner have I taken out The Great Gatsby, which we’ve just been given in English, than someone looms over me. Blond hair swings over the page.

  ‘Budge up, Esther,’ Jasmine says. She smiles her beautiful cool smile, and my own lips stretch into what I know is a goofy grin.

  ‘Hey.’ I make room for her. I set the book down before she can see it’s a school one.

  Cassie and the new twins come up behind her. I know they’re called Zara and Zoë because they’re in my art class.

  ‘So what’s he like?’ Jasmine asks. She takes out a plastic lunchbox and offers me a carrot stick like we have lunch together every day.

  I take one. I love the idea of being someone who eats carrot sticks with Jasmine, even though it’s probably obvious to look at me that I’ve just had a gravy chip with F Scott Fitzgerald. I hope I don’t smell of gravy.

  ‘What’s who like?’ For a stupid moment I think she means Gatsby.

  ‘The new boy, of course,’ Jasmine says. She hugs her knees.

  ‘Um.’ I crunch my carrot stick. It’s not like I’ve talked to Luke.

  Zoë or Zara leans back and sighs. ‘I came here for the boys,’ she says, ‘and so far they’ve been a bit of a let-down.’ She glares at me as if this is somehow my fault.

  ‘The upper sixth are a better-looking year group,’ Cassie says with an expert air. She licks the lid of her yogurt, and moves closer to Jasmine.

  ‘Well, I’ve been banking on some fit new boys,’ Jasmine says. ‘Because I’ve gone through all the acceptable boys in our year and the upper sixth.’

  As I don’t know how many boys she’s gone through I have no idea if this means her standards are very high or very low.

  ‘There’s a real hottie in our art class,’ a twin says. ‘I bagsy him.’ She starts describing him in rapid, hushed tones. It’s obvious she’s describing Mihai, who’s Romanian, and gorgeous, but hardly ever speaks. She’ll be lucky. But I don’t say anything.

  ‘Anyway, Esther, as you can see, it’s slim pickings this year,’ Jasmine says, ‘so we want to know more about – what’s his name?’

  ‘Luke.’

  She nods. ‘Nice.’ She waits. ‘Well?’

  ‘But I … I don’t know anything about him. I walked with him to the nurse. That’s it.’

  ‘But you – the way you were with him. We thought you already knew him.’

  Zoë or Zara says, ‘You took all the handouts and all to keep for him.’

  ‘I was just being nice.’

  ‘Told you, Jas.’ Cassie’s voice is triumphant. ‘Just Esther being a good Christian girl.’

  I open my mouth to say, No, I’ve given up on all that, but how stupid would that sound?

  I have all his handouts safely in a folder. There was an envelope with his address. 11 Lilac Walk. I have no idea where that is, but I like knowing it. I might Google it later. No, I won’t. That would be weird.

  ‘But you were all – when he had that fit thing, you knew what to do. You talked to him like – like you knew him really well,’ Cassie says.

  ‘You were like – touching him, adds Jasmine.’

  She makes it sound dirty. I knew I’d sounded weird. I bet he thought I’d been really forward. I have a sudden memory of my hand reaching out and rubbing his arm. I hadn’t planned to do that; it was just instinct. I only did what I’ve always done.

  I shake my head. ‘I helped out at the special school’s summer scheme. Where my mum teaches? Some of the kids there have seizures. It’s no big deal. You know me, Jasmine – I’m good at looking after people. First aid and stuff.’ I give her a private kind of smile.

  She looks at me blankly, and I realise she actually doesn’t remember results night, she was too drunk. Then I see the warning in Cassie’s froggy eyes and I know she remembers; she remembers every detail, but her eyes are telling me It Never Happened. Cassie was pathetic that night, and she clearly doesn’t like the fact that I wasn’t.

  ‘So you don’t know anything about him?’ Cassie asks.

  ‘And you’re not going out with him? – I told you she couldn’t be,’ says Jasmine.

  ‘Nope,’ I say. ‘He’s all yours.’

  The four of them exchange glances.

  ‘I’d give him one,’ Jasmine says. ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Me too,’ says Cassie, who always agrees with Jasmine.

  The twins look at each other. ‘I don’t know,’ says one. ‘What if he had a fit on the job?’ She shudders and wriggles her fingers like she’s touched something gross.

  ‘Zoë! That’s minging,’ Zara says.

  ‘He can’t help it,’ Jasmine says. ‘And he is very cute.’

  They’ve lost interest in me now I’ve nothing to offer them, but they aren’t rude enough to get up and leave – or maybe they just can’t be bothered. Lunch is nearly over.

  ‘Would you, Esther?’ Cassie asks.

  ‘Would I what?’

  ‘Give him one?’

  Give him one what? I nearly ask. I shrug. ‘Probably,’ I say nonchalantly.

  ‘Well, bagsy me first go,’ Jasmine says. She gives me a narrow look that makes her eyes look all mascara and no eyeball.

  The bell clangs and I stuff The Great Gatsby back in my schoolbag. I know, as I watch them all dash off to class without asking me where I’m going, that it’s the last time they’ll bother to be friendly.

  As for giving him one. My chances with Luke have never been great, but now those four have decided he is very cute they’re non-existent. And I’m certainly not going to make the mistake I made with Jasmine and think we’re friends or something just because I helped him out. I have got some pride.

  This is all too hard. It was never like this with Ruth or the other girls at our Christian youth group. But I can’t think about Ruth now, and I’m not thinking about Luke Bressan either.

  Much.

  Luke

  ‘Take the day off,’ Sandra says next morning when she catches me looking for painkillers in the kitchen drawer. I don’t know where things are in this house yet.

  ‘I’m fine. It’s just a headache.’

  ‘You can’t be fine if you need painkillers.’ She reaches up into a high cupboard and hands me down an old biscuit tin. I check out the array of tablets, go for the strongest ones. She hands me a gl
ass of water. I swallow two pills and sneak a couple into my pocket for later. The headache’s fading, but it’s as well to be ready.

  I sit at the table and pour some cornflakes into a bowl. I ache everywhere. Why don’t I ever have a seizure in a nice soft padded cell? Or even on carpet?

  Sandra puts the tin back up in the cupboard. ‘Bill, you tell him.’

  Bill looks up from The Belfast Telegraph. ‘Tell him what, love?’

  ‘That he’s not up to going to school.’

  Bill takes off his glasses. ‘Looks all right to me. Sure isn’t it great the lad wants to go?’ He sets the paper down. ‘She can’t get used to somebody wanting to go to school. Half the kids we’ve had, you’d to beat them out the door.’

  ‘Not literally beat,’ Sandra cuts in, as if I’m going to get straight on the phone to the Social. She leans over Bill and pours herself a cup of tea, but she doesn’t sit down. ‘Is there any point in going in on a Friday? Sure it’s nearly the weekend.’

  I spoon cornflakes determinedly into my mouth. No wonder she ended up only being a foster carer with that attitude to education. ‘I’ve already missed most of a day. All the AS courses will be starting. I don’t want to get behind.’

  And if I wait until Monday, if I have all weekend to remember waking up in a puddle of piss on that classroom floor with everybody staring at me, I might not have the courage to do it. I have to get it over with now. But I can’t tell her that. I can’t let her see I’m bothered, that in my stomach, pecking uneasily at the undigested cornflakes, is a fluttery bird that won’t keep still.

  ‘Well.’ She shakes her grey frizzy head and folds her arms across her big chest. I know she’s used to getting her own way. I know that’s one reason I’ve been put here. Sandra and Bill won’t stand any nonsense. But I’m insisting on going to school, not staying out all night drinking. ‘At least let me drive you.’

  When we’re driving out of the estate, she says, ‘You’re a stubborn one. Brendan warned me about that.’

  I wonder what else he’s warned her about, but I’m not going to ask.

  _____________

  I hesitate at the door of the sixth-form centre but I can’t make myself open it.

  ‘Hey, can we get past?’ Two girls push by me in a whirl of perfume and long blond hair. They may or may not be in my tutor group. Most of the girls here look the same. The door slams behind them.

  There must be a library but I don’t know where. I decide to try to find my tutor-group room. I take a couple of wrong turns – all the corridors are identical tunnels of scuffed cream walls punctuated by black bins and blue doors. But at last I find it, Room 33. It’s empty. I head for the same seat I had yesterday. There’s nothing to show what happened – no stain on the floor; no marks on the desk. It’s only in my head that the seizure lingers. I take out my timetable and study it. History. English lit. Maths. Economics. Good solid subjects. Brendan encouraged me to keep on art but that would be a waste of time. It’s not like I’m good enough to make a living at it. ‘It’s good for you to express your feelings,’ Brendan says – which is the kind of puke-making thing social workers always say. I take out a pencil and doodle in the corner of my timetable, without thinking, just a little Celtic knot, and then I’m annoyed because it was all neat and perfect and now it’s messed up. I check in my new pencil case but I don’t have an eraser.

  The door creaks open and the bird fluffs out its feathers and beats its wings against the bottom of my stomach.

  It’s The Girl. She’s carrying an art folder, and her darkbrown hair is pulled back in a short pony tail. I look down at my timetable and then force myself to look up. She’s right beside me. She hugs her folder. I read her name upside down. Esther Wilson.

  ‘Hey,’ she says.

  ‘Hey.’ I swallow.

  Esther stares at her feet. ‘Are you OK now?’ Her cheeks are very pink.

  ‘Fine. Thanks for …’ I wave my hand.

  ‘You didn’t miss much. We got some handouts. I took copies for you. I thought Baxter might forget. He’s a bit senile.’

  I wish everybody would forget. I wish they were all a bit senile. This girl, setting her folder down on the seat, rummaging in her bag, is embarrassed just talking to me, her face burning and her words tumbling. And she was the one who’d been so cool. What’s everyone else going to be like? The bird inside me starts having a seizure of its own.

  ‘Here.’ She hands me over three sheets of A4, slightly crumpled, and an envelope with Sandra’s address on it. ‘Sorry. The folder got a bit squished in my bag.’ Her voice is gruff and low and quick, not the reassuring calm voice I thought I remembered.

  ‘No, that’s great. Thanks.’ I glance at them. Term dates. PTA. Coursework Deadlines. ‘Are you going to sit down?’ I ask.

  ‘Oh.’ She looks uncomfortable. ‘I don’t think Baxter will make us stay in the same seats.’

  The bird sticks its head under its wing and stalks off.

  ‘Suit yourself. Thanks for the handouts.’

  I start reading them to show her I don’t need company, I’m only being polite.

  But she hesitates. ‘Do you want me to sit here?’ She pulls at her growing-out fringe.

  I shrug. I read about how parents can help raise money for the new changing rooms, and how late coursework will not be tolerated. The chair beside me clatters as she pulls it out. She sits down. Glances across at me. Nervously. I can’t believe this is the same girl. But the warm clean smell of her cardigan is the same.

  ‘You’re quite safe,’ I say. ‘I’m not going to have another fit on you.’ I cross my fingers under the desk because that’s a promise I can never make.

  Her cheeks blaze. ‘Look, you could have ten seizures a day and it wouldn’t bother me. That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘Oh.’ I fold the handouts; slip them into my blazer pocket.

  The clock over the door says five to nine. Already the corridor outside is filling up with chatter and buzz. Before I can ask her what she did mean the bell clangs. Baxter comes in and dumps a bulging briefcase on his desk. Other people mooch in past him, yawning, chatting, slipping phones into pockets, pulling earphones out of ears. I look down at my timetable so I don’t have to make eye contact with anybody. Double English first. Maths. Break. I read the meaningless room numbers and teacher initials and wonder when it will all make sense.

  ‘Hey.’

  I think someone must be saying hello to Esther, but when I look up, there is one of those girls they mass-produce here. Tall, blonde, tanned, beautiful, short black skirt skimming perfect thighs. Beside her a skinny girl with big eyes and mousey hair. Definitely looking at me. They don’t seem to notice Esther, who’s leafing through The Great Gatsby.

  ‘Oh my God, are you OK?’

  ‘We thought you were dying.’

  ‘We were so worried about you.’

  Their fussing tentacles around me. The headache throbs at my skull again.

  ‘Jasmine, Cassie, sit down,’ drones the teacher before I have to say anything, and the darker girl sighs but obeys him.

  ‘You’re in my English class,’ the blonde girl says. She smiles. ‘I’ll show you where to go if you like. After assembly.’

  ‘Jasmine!’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’ She flounces past my desk, her silky hair floating after her. She looks back and smiles before sitting down.

  Esther chews the side of her thumbnail.

  ‘Do you have English first?’ I ask her, guessing from The Great Gatsby that she’s doing English. ‘With – um – Mr Donovan?’

  ‘Yes. He’s new. But I suppose they’ll all be new to you.’

  ‘Will you show me where to go?’

  She smiles a slow wide smile. ‘What about Jasmine?’ she asks.

  I shrug. ‘What about her?’

  The boy in front turns round. He has a face like a pink cushion. ‘Wow,’ he says. ‘Two girls fighting over you on your second day.’

  Esther

  �
��And we pray, Lord …’

  Everybody in senior assembly gives up the will to live. Dad’s on form. Every time you think he’s prayed for the whole world he takes another breath, and says, ‘And we also remember, Lord …’

  I wriggle my buttocks, which are already sore from listening to Ma McCandless’s uniform lecture and the headmistress’s usual new-year-new-start talk, hunch further over and study my hands.

  I try to blank out Dad’s holy voice but he’s moved on to natural disasters and unfortunately there’s been a hurricane somewhere this week and a flood somewhere else. Beside me Luke whispers, ‘Are they having a competition to see who can be the most boring?’

  ‘They’re always hyper at first. It wears off by half term.’

  ‘How many clichés can you get into one prayer? Is this wanker on speed or something?’

  I don’t say, Try living with him; I just smile and then thankfully Dad runs out of people to pray for, and five hundred people scramble up in numb-bottomed relief.

  In English, Luke pulls out the seat beside mine without asking. I try to hide how pleased I am by switching into helpful-swot mode, showing him the notes we made yesterday.

  ‘Can I borrow your book to copy this up?’ he asks.

  ‘Of course.’

  People drift in around us but I don’t see Jasmine. Mr Donovan, pink and baby-faced, comes in, nearly hidden under a huge pile of handouts. Luke goes up to ask for a copy of The Great Gatsby. Donovan can’t find one and gets flustered, his cheeks blooming redder by the moment. As Luke stands by the teacher’s desk, waiting, I try not to stare at him, but I can’t help it. A shaft of sunlight slants through the window and finds gold lights in his hair. It’s too warm in the classroom, and Luke pushes his shirtsleeves up to his elbows. I remember stroking his arm yesterday and my neck burns.

  Get a grip, Esther, I tell myself. I doodle on my notes, then remember I’m meant to be lending them to Luke and stop before I draw something embarrassing.

  Jasmine dashes in, clutching her books to her chest because her designer schoolbag is too tiny to actually hold anything. She pauses beside Luke at the teacher’s desk.