by Tom Avery
“I’m not a freak,” I whisper.
The boy stays silent.
“You don’t think I’m a freak, do you?”
Still the boy does not answer.
“You’re my friend.”
We stare for a time. Above, the clouds slowly drift. Nearby, a tiny boy, all blond hair and filthy cheeks, runs while his mum sits watching his tumbles. On the other side of the park, beyond the football pitch, a stand of horse chestnuts gently sway.
“Aesculus hippocastanum,” I say as they come into our ever-changing view. Even from that distance I can see the scar running down the trunk of the shortest one, the stunted one. It’s a scar I know well; I’ve run my hand along its rough surface countless times.
I talk no more; we are friends, and friends don’t need to talk. I pull a pencil from my bag and I write as the world spins.
Before we left we took a tour around the trees. I plucked two long, slender leaves, as green as green. I placed one in the boy’s cool palm. The other I tucked carefully between the pages of my worn yellow book; there weren’t many moments I wanted to remember, but that was one.
* * *
When I get home, Mum has a new hobby. Hobby. Do I have a hobby? Trees is a hobby, I guess. I want to plant one. I want to plant something. I have a packet of seeds in my room, hidden amongst my socks, tucked out of sight. I could plant them. But then they’d be gone. So I keep them safe, locked away, frozen.
Mum’s new hobby is smashing stuff. I can hear her from the street.
Smash.
There goes a plate.
Smash.
There goes a mug.
Smash.
There goes a jar of jam.
I know I’ll clear it up later when Mum sleeps. I know if I clear well enough, Mum will forget it ever happened. Till she wants some toast, of course.
I don’t want to see it now. I’ve learned when to stay away. Instead I open the front door silently, like in class, and step lightly upstairs. And upstairs I write the rest of this.
I can hear the smashing slowing down.
Smash.
A bottle of foul-smelling drink, which sprays over every surface and drips from every broken pot and plate and jar, covering the floor.
Smash.
Another plate.
Then a different sound—Mum falling into the mess she’s made.
I don’t know I’m crying till my paper tears as I write. Damp paper.
Through my eyes, all is damp: my pink duvet—it needs washing; my bookshelf, filled with books I once read; my chest of drawers, decorated with flowers, hand-painted by my missing brother.
In the mirror, hanging wonky, I am damp. My black hair gathered in two frizzy bunches drips with tears. Hazelnut skin is slick.
The door creaks open. Mum comes in.
I wipe the tears from my eyes and the world is dry again.
Her words are slurred and I think she’s put the destruction from her mind already.
“I’m gonna ’ave a bath, darling,” she says.
I nod.
Inside I scream.
I say nothing.
From my window I can see the same swaying horse chestnuts.
Cut a tree open. Count its rings. You’ll know its years.
Cut me open. What is there to count? Will my years show? Or inside is there something else?
Would you find inside me all the loss, all the pain? Would you find inside me a big, fat, book-sized mystery? Does our pain show our years?
Cut a tree, and as it grows its scar will grow with it. It does not close up. It does not heal. It gets big as the tree gets big.
My scars feel big. They feel as big as I am big. I want to grow, but will they grow with me? Will they heal up?
I freeze them here because I cannot have them any bigger. I freeze everything here.
SCHOOL TRIP
We are meant to be going on a trip. We are traveling on the Tube, across town to the British Museum.
Every day Mr. Wills asks me if I’ve brought back my letter. Every day I lie.
“I’ve forgotten it,” I say.
Truth: It got caught up in the destruction, in Mum’s hobby. I can’t take it back, wrinkled and smelling like it does.
Mr. Wills talks to me like I’m an idiot.
“How could you forget it again? How?”
His voice gets all whiny, like a birthing cow. I saw one on TV once.
“I don’t understand, how?”
In my life I’ve cried a lot. You’d think my eyes would have dried out.
But then, thinking about the spoiled letter, about Mum and the drinking, about what Mr. Wills and my idiot ex-friends think of me, a single hot tear escapes my eye and blips off the end of my nose.
I can feel the boy next to me, watching. I can hear his thinking, wondering. Maybe he’s never seen tears.
“Come on, Kaia,” my teacher says. “Don’t worry. I’ll call home. We’ll get it sorted out.”
He did. He got it sorted out.
I arrived at school early on the day of the trip. I was excited to be going out.
Jo, the gardener, was harvesting the last of the winter vegetables. I sat quietly and watched her. She was wearing one of her fantastic colored jumpers, all different stripes and squares of brightness, pink and green, white and blue today.
“Oh! You gave me a fright, Kaia,” she said when she noticed me.
“Sorry,” I whispered.
She smiled a warm smile. She asked if I wanted to help. I did. Sometimes I think about being older. I think about not being frozen anymore. I think about life being very different.
In these thoughts I’m a gardener, like Jo. The sun warms me as I gently push seeds into the soft soil, bringing new life. I’d like that.
We worked quietly. I liked that too.
Jo showed me how to remove the fat, bulbous brussels, how to pull up the finished plant and throw it on the compost heap.
“You’ve got to get the whole plant, Kaia, the roots too. They’re one of the most important parts of the plant; without them, you wouldn’t get lovely vegetables like this. You’ve got to make sure nothing stops the roots growing; otherwise they can’t feed the plant. But it’s just as important that you get them up so they don’t keep growing beneath the soil.”
She pulled up pinky-white onions, delicate compared to the big brown monsters my mum used to cook with.
“Nearly spring, eh?” the gardener said, pointing to rows of green shooting out of the neighboring bed.
Nearly spring? I thought.
Jo read my mind, or maybe she read my face. “The daffodils are nearly here.” She pointed out one green shoot, whose head was cut with a flash of yellow. “That’s how we know it’s spring, when the daffs say hello.”
When the daffs say hello.
I long for spring, for an end to the frost, an end to the fourteen-month winter.
Me and the boy go on the trip together. You have to have a partner on school trips in case you get lost. Then you’re lost together, not lost alone. So I got to go with the boy. Harry walked beside us too.
I say “I got to,” but it wasn’t really a choice; no one else would be my partner. We didn’t care. If we’d had the choice we would have chosen each other anyway. At least, I would have chosen him and I hope he would’ve chosen me.
We stared and talked and listened as we walked to the Tube in the chill air. I told him about the trees we passed: a slender silver birch (Betula pendula), bark peeling like paper; an old elm (Ulmus glabra), knots in the branch, like a face, inspecting us each in turn.
The boy loved the Tube; it was definitely a first for him. I loved it too. He made me see it with fresh eyes—the rush of wind as the escalators drag you deep underground, the long tunnels that stretch away endlessly, the primal roar of metal on metal as the trains career forwards.
“What is wrong with you?” Poppy sneered as we stood gleefully on the platform. I had grown used to Poppy, used to her taunts, used to her looks of disgust, u
sed to letting her comments go unchallenged. But him, the boy, I wanted to defend.
“There’s nothing wrong with us.” I glared back.
“Ooh!” Poppy began, her idiot friends cackling. “The freak strikes back.”
Now I’d started, I couldn’t stop. Rage had risen in my chest. I stepped towards her and felt my new friend step up beside me, a low growl stirring the air.
“Call us that again,” I hissed.
Poppy looked at me, looked at the boy, back at me. “Ah, forget you,” she said, turning her back, long blond hair whipping.
I couldn’t quite believe what had happened. But it got even more amazing.
From behind me came a soft voice, an ex-friend, Luzie.
“Don’t worry, Kaia. Poppy can be a right horrible you-know-what.”
I couldn’t speak. Had someone just talked to me without making me feel like a squashed ant?
OK, you won’t believe this either: it gets even more incredible.
At lunch, Luzie sat next to me. It almost made me cry.
This is a true story.
I remember the last time Luzie sat next to me. I almost cried that time too. It was three months and seven days after the funeral.
“I don’t know what to say anymore, Kaia,” she said.
I did not answer her. I had no words.
I heard her sniff and her voice crack as she spoke again. “If you want to talk to me, you can talk to me. But …”
I didn’t look at her. I heard her sniff again. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her hand wipe across her face.
“But … my mum says you might want to be alone for a while.”
Still I was silent. I didn’t nod. My eyes stared straight forwards.
Luzie stood and walked away, sniffing. Then I looked up as my last friend left.
IMPERFECTIONS
I don’t want to talk about the funeral, but it happened.
Family were there. Granny and Grandpop flew all the way over; Mum’s sister and my cousins came down from Coventry.
Moses’s friends came too, all caps and black jackets.
They called me Tiny and I didn’t answer. They hugged Mum, who stood like a tree trunk.
They weren’t my brother. They weren’t Mum’s son.
The funeral happened on a Tuesday. I remember this because all through the service, as the vicar prayed and Mum cried and tried to say things about her son, I kept thinking that I was missing swimming at school. I should have been remembering my brother, but in my head I was doing widths.
I missed a few weeks of school, almost a month. I sat and cried with Mum, who said it was just me and her now. I sat and cried with a social worker lady, who promised she’d try to come back and visit but never did. I sat and cried with Granny, who said she was always there for me and then flew hundreds of miles away.
When I’d cried all my tears and buried the pain somewhere between my heart and my stomach, Mum sent me back to school.
At first everyone tried to be nice. My friends hugged me and held on to me, like my sadness was something they could suck out of me. I shrugged them off.
They whispered sorrys and asked if I was OK—stupid question. They spoke of happy things. I closed my ears and kept my own thoughts locked away.
Eventually they stared at me like I was a curiosity, a puzzle that couldn’t be solved.
I wasn’t much to look at, and in the end they even gave up on staring. All except Luzie. She sat by me long after I was just a freak to everyone else. Her sad glances and her hopeful smiles did not cease.
I lost Moses. Luzie lost me.
It didn’t all change on the school trip. It couldn’t all change. Not just like that. It wasn’t like Luzie talked to me all break time even. It wasn’t like before. But it was something, something out of the ordinary.
Normally I’m surrounded by empty seats.
Later in the day, the boy and I stole away. I love that phrase. We didn’t actually steal anything really, except some time.
So we stole away, away from the rest of the class, from Mr. Wills, from Harry, who was talking to Shadid and a group of boys about Egyptian hieroglyphics and ancient graffiti. We found ourselves in a room full of patterns: patterns on vases, patterns on tiles, patterns on boxes—beautiful, intricate patterns, shapes and flowers and vines and letters, some in a soft flowing script, some square and printed.
A man stood in front of a wall of tiles, speaking. A group of children sat in front of him, listening. We crouched behind, eavesdropping.
“Can anyone spot the mistake in this one?” the man asked, pointing out an almost-cross-shaped tile.
A girl near the front, a yellow bandanna holding her hair down, put her hand up and told him that one of the letters was missing a line.
“You see,” the man went on, “most Islamic artists will add a deliberate mistake to their work to make it imperfect. They believe that only God is perfect, and they show this in their art.”
We wandered on, into the gallery.
“That’s like people, isn’t it?” I said to the boy.
He stared back at me.
“Everyone’s got something wrong. No one’s perfect.”
We looked at a large vase, about half as tall as me. I was searching for the mistake.
“Just, we’re the only ones brave enough to admit it.”
I thought this might be true, even though I felt far from brave.
The way back was much like the way there. It was much like it, the walking, the Tube. But it was also very different; I wasn’t afraid of Poppy or the other girls. Luzie smiled at me and I smiled back. And I noticed as I stared at the others, my classmates, they all had things wrong, just like me.
When we got back into the playground and stood shivering, waiting for our parents, Jo was no longer by the flower beds, but a different face, just as welcome, said hello: a soft yellow star, the first daffodil.
GROWING
After the school trip, my angel brother came down again.
He sat on the end of my bed. He hadn’t sat before, just sort of hovered. I could see the wounds, thick streaks of red across his wrists, still glistening, wet, sticky. They made me think of jewels; rubies set in golden skin. I wondered how much a ruby that size would be worth.
He looked where I was looking and pulled his sleeves down to cover the terrible chasms.
“Hey, Tiny,” he said.
I said “Hey” back.
Bright eyes glowed out from under a flat-brimmed cap. Moses cast them around the room, then fixed them back on me. “You’re growing,” he said.
I didn’t feel like it. I hadn’t had new shoes or trousers in ages, not since the last time I’d seen him in the waking world. I told him so.
“No,” he said, pressing his hand against his chest. “In here, you’re growing.”
I placed my own hand on my own chest. Inside, my heart beat and fluttered. We sat still a long time. I felt in the darkness the pulsing warmth of my body.
“I’m growing?”
“You’re growing. And it’s good. You’ve got to grow,” the angel Moses said.
Mr. Wills has been teaching us about similes and metaphors, when you compare something to something else that it’s like.
Here’s a famous simile by William Wordsworth:
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills
It’s good, isn’t it? The cloud, lonely, wandering, high, away from everything.
When Mr. Wills told us about it I was staring out the window, inspecting the clouds, making it make sense.
“You’ve got to pay attention, Kaia!” he shouted at me. “This is important, you’ve got to focus.”
I know, I thought. And I was. But I didn’t say anything; I just stared back at the board as if that rectangle of white were where you could learn everything under the sun.
Poppy and the clever table got to write simile poems about animals, describing the way they look, act, feel.
We had a “fill in the blanks” worksheet. Stupid stuff like:
The boy ran as fast as …
A lion’s mane is like …
The teacher was as fierce as …
I hate doing stupid work. Mr. Wills shouted at me again; he was in a bad mood. “You’re just not trying.”
He was right. I wasn’t.
My favorite one we looked at is by Valerie Bloom, which is the most wonderful name. This one’s a metaphor:
Time’s a thief … leaving you with tears and sighs.
I talked to Harry that afternoon, in the hall, outside of class. Harry was trying to watch the boy, who was circling the large room, swooping like a bird, but I wanted to talk to him.
We wrote a poem together, me and Harry. I did the talking. Harry did the writing. He let me take it and copy it out in my notebook.
NOW SHE GROWS
Out in the cold like a windblown willow,
Weeping branches pushed here and there,
Full of sorrow like water fills the sea,
She sits, she stares.
Lonely as a cloud, not like any other,
She wanders, so distant, so apart.
Like a patterned tile is her smile,
Ruined, imperfect, marred.
Time stole her happiness in a moment,
The crook, the thief,
But now she grows,
Heart grows, like roots beneath.
VOMIT AND PANCAKES
Mum was sick, really sick.
I was awakened by a crash. My eyes opened. The darkness was complete except for a narrow slit in the curtains.
From behind my door I heard a soft groan. I stayed as still as possible and listened. And listened. Another groan.
I pushed my duvet to one side; I knew that voice, my mother’s.
It was just as dark in the hallway, but now that my eyes had adjusted, outlined objects became clear. My mum lay sprawled across the floor. A bottle, the neck smashed, rested just out of reach of her hand. A pool of sadness circled both my mother and the bottle; its stale tang attacked the back of my throat.
