Daylight Saving

by Edward Hogan

  He pulled at a tangled thread of his yellow hair and frowned. “A girl? I didn’t see a girl, man,” he said.

  “She was right next to me,” I said.

  “Sure, man,” he said slowly. “Whatever you say.”

  The frown never left his face.

  Dad went down to the on-site pub, the Red Lion, and I sneaked off to meet Lexi at eight. The cinder paths smelled of fresh rain, and the air was as clean as steel; the sky was a dark blue. She was waiting by a tree, her legs crossed, hair slick, hands in her lap. I dropped the bike and walked over to her. She noticed that I was limping. “What happened?” she said.

  “Nothing. I think I must have pulled a muscle while I was swimming.”

  “You’ll want to be in shape for what we’re about to do. It requires peak physical condition,” she said.

  “Well, that shouldn’t be a problem, then,” I said, patting my belly.

  She took me by the arms. “You have good solid shoulders, Daniel. That’s what you need. Now, give me a backy.”

  While I stood astride the bike, she sat on the seat with her legs out to the sides, and I pedaled off in the sprint position. “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Other side of the lake. We’re going round in a big circle.”

  “Like history,” I said.

  The dynamo clicked, and the light flickered on the ditches and wooden fence rails. She told me to slow down when we reached a group of family residences. This was the area where big families stayed, and it was dominated by rows of tall terraced houses. It looked like one of those new housing estates and reminded me that there was a world outside.

  “Leave the bike in the bushes,” Lexi whispered.

  I did as I was told. “What are we doing? I’m not robbing anyone,” I said.

  “Wait,” she said.

  We crept through long grass to the fence of the first back garden. Just a normal paneled fence. The wood was damp from the rain and warm from the sun that had followed the storm. The houses were on a downward slope, so you could see bits of the other gardens, and the fences like a line of dominoes. Some people had hung out their swimming towels on the washing lines.

  Lexi put her foot on the ledge of one of the fence panels and her hands on the top of the fence, her fingers flickering to avoid splinters. One of her fingernails was black, and blood rose around its edges. She put her head down and rocked.

  “What are we doing?” I said.

  “Follow me,” she said. “And whatever you do, don’t think.”

  She pulled herself up and over the fence, and I heard her running across the first garden. She was on top of the second fence before I had overcome my shock. I tried to haul myself up, but I was too heavy for a standing start. I took a few paces back and ran at the fence, jumped, grappled, and I was over. Four chairs stood in the garden, a sopping magazine on the table. I paused for a moment and then started running for the next fence, propelled by fear and joy.

  It was an incredible feeling, and something I will always remember. I could feel the adrenaline roaring inside of me and the hushed glide of the air against my skin. At first, I just concentrated on her back and tried to forget the fact that there were people in those houses to my left. But soon I relaxed into it. My senses were heightened. I felt the wet squeaks of the long grass beneath my feet as I slipped and slid like a newborn deer. The fourth garden smelled of bins; the fifth smelled of detergent from the towels they’d forgot to take off the line. Lexi tried to sabotage me, back-heeling a tricycle into my path and spinning another washing line so that the towels clattered into my face. She ran in absolute silence, but I could see her shoulders trembling from laughter.

  Me, I wanted to holler. I wanted to howl with the rush of it all.

  When we’d started, I had been afraid that people would see us, but now I didn’t care. In fact, I wanted them to. This was how I wanted to be seen. This was how I wanted to be known: as a silvery streak of moonlit man hurtling past the window, a moment of pure beauty in the life of these shoddy holiday homes.

  It felt like everything was in high-definition. Lexi spit on a plant by the sixth fence, and I could see the bubbles of saliva on the leaf, like sap. I reached the top of the eighth fence just as she reached the top of the ninth — she was exactly where I would be in three seconds’ time. She was my future. The route of gardens unraveled beyond her. I sprinted across the tenth lawn and then — bang! — I hit a table camouflaged with a green tarp and flipped over the top of it, rolling across the grass. I was still laughing when I stood up. I turned to my left and saw a woman standing behind the patio door in her living area, looking absolutely dumbfounded in her tracksuit. Our eyes met for a moment, and then I was gone. “Wooo!” I shouted as I picked up speed again.

  When I got over the last fence, I saw that Lexi was already lying on her back in the long grass, her chest going up and then down in even heaves, the left side fluttering. I ran over and lay down beside her, turned onto my stomach, and looked back at where we had come from.

  “You made it,” she said.

  I could hardly breathe. “Yes,” I said.

  “Daniel,” she said. “I think you may have found your sport.”

  We stared at the hazy crescent moon. “Looks like a fingernail,” I said.

  “I’ve always wanted long fingernails,” she said. “But I will never get them.”

  “You will.”

  She shook her head.

  “You’re a good partner,” she said. “I could hear you behind me.”

  I felt the back of her hand against the back of mine. It wasn’t much, but it was contact.

  “I’m playing volleyball with my dad tomorrow. And the two women next door. I arranged it,” I said.

  “You got him some adult company,” she said. “Good for you, Daniel.”

  “It’ll be a bit of a comedown after this,” I said.

  “Well,” she said.

  I picked up her scent. She smelled of the lake, a scent that is almost untraceable. It almost smells of nothing, but it contains the freshness of life. The dark, dark greenness of the water.

  “Where’s your mother?” she said.

  “She’s staying with her sister down south. Nowhere else to go. She comes up to see me once a fortnight. I try to get Dad to come along, at least to talk to her. I’m missing the next visit because I’m here.”

  “What a pain,” she said.

  “It’s got its good points,” I said. I didn’t look at her. Thinking about Mum and Dad immediately made me tense. I raised myself up onto my elbows.

  “Do you want your parents to get back together?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think that’s possible?”

  “Maybe. I split them up, so I can probably work out a way to get them back together, right?” All the anger was flowing into me again.

  “What do you mean you split them up?” she said.

  “I saw my mum with another man. My dad asked me about it, and I couldn’t hide it from him.”

  Lexi sighed. I was getting irate. I looked at her, but she was just staring at the moon.

  “Are you listening?” I said. “I’m telling you I destroyed my family.”

  “That’s not very nice, is it?” she said.

  “I didn’t do it on bloody purpose!” I shouted. “I didn’t want to see Mum with the doctor. I didn’t want Dad to question me about it. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault, was it?”

  Lexi turned to me. “No. No, it wasn’t. Well, then. You’ve said it.”

  I looked at her. I was breathing hard, trying to stop myself crying. But she was right. And it was the first time I had ever said that it wasn’t my fault. She had this way of making things plain and obvious.

  I lay back in the grass. My heart was still beating fast from running across the gardens, but I felt better now. “Are your parents divorced?” I said. I didn’t expect her to answer.

  “No. Weird, eh? Most people in my school had divorced p
arents. When I was small, my best friend said to her mum, ‘Lexi Cocker’s family must be really poor, because her parents have to live in the same house.’”

  “That’s funny,” I said. “What’s Lexi short for?”

  “Alexandria,” she said.

  Alexandria Cocker. I thought back to the letters carved on the tree. AHC. Her initials.

  “What do the numbers mean? On the tree?” I asked, softer this time. But she shook her head. Then she put her hand through her hair, scrunched it. Her eyes widened. “I’ve got to go,” she said.

  She scrambled to her feet and winced, holding her belly.

  “Wait,” I said. I grabbed her arm, but she yanked it away viciously and ran off into the trees, in the direction of the lake. “Lexi,” I called, “what’s happening?”

  She did not turn, and she did not reply. I swallowed hard and looked around. The counselor at school said I didn’t like sudden good-byes. He was right. They made me anxious. I could still feel the place on the palm of my hand where I had briefly held Lexi before she tore herself away. It was ice-cold.

  I prepared to serve the volleyball. Dad stood in front of me, near the net. He had his hands behind his back, two fingers held up on one hand. “Time out,” I called to Chrissy and Tash. They relaxed and slapped each other’s hands. I walked over to Dad, who was still facing the net. “Dad,” I whispered.

  “Yes, Daniel.”

  “I don’t know what those hand signals mean,” I said.

  “Oh, right. Neither do I, to be honest,” he said. “I’ve seen them do it on the telly, and I thought it would make Chrissy and Tash think we knew what we were doing.”

  We were losing by a considerable margin. “I think they might have worked out that we don’t, by now,” I said.

  Dad laughed. “Yeah.”

  I went back to the baseline and served deep to Chrissy. “Mine!” she shouted, punching the ball high into the air so that it swirled in the wind.

  “Set me up!” Chrissy called, moving toward the net. Tash softened her hands and set the ball just above the net. I started to move across to cover the left side of the court, but so did Dad. “Go line!” Tash called. Chrissy leaped high and smashed the ball toward the open court. Dad reversed himself almost in midair and got a hand to it, but it wasn’t enough. He finished stretched out in the sand, growling and laughing.

  The sisters whooped and high-fived. “Great play,” Dad said. He was wearing a tank top, despite the blustery weather, and blue-tinted swimming goggles as protection against sand. I thought he looked ridiculous, but he seemed happy enough. His arms were pink with windburn.

  I, on the other hand, was struggling. I had woken with pains all over my body. My ankle was swollen, and the bedsheets had been stuck to a long, freely bleeding gash on my leg. Maybe, I thought, I picked up the injuries while jumping over those fences. But I had begun to suspect something more sinister.

  I looked over to the lake. The trees where I had first seen Lexi were shuddering in the wind, but there was no sign of her. No smoke from the cooking pit, no red hoodie, no limbs breaking the water. I thought of how quickly she had left me in the long grass and of the sinking feeling I’d gotten when she did so. I thought of a TV program I had seen about flesh-eating bacteria. The man in the program had contracted the disease after cutting himself while swimming. I didn’t know who or what Lexi was or where she was from, but I was beginning to think she was contagious.

  Chrissy served the ball, but I was so angry, I just slammed it into the net. “For God’s sake!” I shouted, pretending I was angry with the shot.

  “Language, Daniel!”

  “God’s not a fucking swear word, Dad,” I said.

  I caught Tash and Chrissy exchanging a glance. “Just leave it,” Tash said to her sister. “He doesn’t need your New Age nonsense.”

  “What harm can it do?” Chrissy said.

  Tash sighed and turned to Dad. “I’m a bit worn out now, to be honest. Shall we call it a draw?”

  Dad laughed. “That’s kind of you. But I think you two were the victors.”

  “Ricky, I’ll buy you a commiseration coffee at the Pancake House,” Tash said.

  “I could do with something stronger. Maybe one of their finest . . .”

  “Bit early for that, Ricky,” Chrissy said sternly.

  Dad nodded.

  I stood with my hands on my thighs. The wind gained strength and then died for a moment. Three drops of blood fell on the sand, and I watched the grains absorb the liquid. A dark paste formed, then the wind picked up again and blew the stain away. The blood came from the gash on my leg, and it seemed to be getting worse.

  “Looks nasty,” Chrissy said.

  “I fell off my bike,” I lied.

  Chrissy nodded. “Why don’t we get out of this gale?” she said.

  We walked over to the grass bank of the bike path, where the trees provided some shelter from the wind. Chrissy had a kind face, with freckles. She sat down with her legs folded beneath her. She stretched her back. Had I attempted either of those movements, I would have ended up in hospital. The way I was bleeding, there was every chance of that, anyway.

  “I fell off my bike yesterday, too,” she said. “I was wearing nylon sports pants — whatever they’re called now. Training pants or something.”

  “Sounds like a nappy,” I said.

  She laughed. “Yes, it does rather, doesn’t it? Anyway, I cut my knee on the gravel. Look.” She showed me the little scab on her kneecap. “The amazing thing is, the pants didn’t even rip.”

  “It’s hard-wearing stuff,” I said.

  “If there’s ever a nuclear war, the only beings left will be cockroaches in tracksuits,” she said.

  “It’ll be like Nottingham,” I said.

  “Now, now, Daniel.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Daniel, when your father comes home and he’s had a few drinks, do you ever fight?”

  “Yes. Especially when he puts Phil Collins on the stereo, full blast. Although sometimes I blame Phil Collins.”

  “Does it ever get physical?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Does your dad ever hit you?”

  I put my head in my hands. I could see how she’d reached that conclusion, and I was grateful for her concern, but these counseling chats always went down the same old roads. I needed Lexi. Lexi understood. But Lexi had run off without so much as a good-bye.

  “Daniel?”

  “What?”

  “Does he hit you?”

  “No. Sometimes I wish he would.”

  “You don’t mean that, Daniel,” she said.

  “Well. Maybe it’d help him get over it.”

  “Get over what?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  Chrissy was still sweating from the volleyball game. “You don’t have to be afraid of talking about this, you know. When someone comes at you, it can be very intimidating.”

  “My problem isn’t people coming at me,” I said. “It’s people going away.”

  She smiled and then shuffled behind me. I turned my head to keep an eye on her. “Would you agree that you feel under stress, Daniel?” she said.

  “Well, yeah,” I said.

  “There are things I can do to ease that anxiety. Reiki can get you back into balance.”

  Her voice, when it wasn’t asking questions about domestic abuse, was soothing. And she was right about balance. I was off-balance. Maybe that’s why the swimming had helped.

  “Are you a psychic?” I asked.

  “God, no. We’d have beaten you by even more points if I was psychic. Reiki is a sort of palm healing. It’s very relaxing.”

  She moved a little closer to me. “You can tell so much about what’s inside a person from their physical aspect. My grandmother worked in a munitions factory during the war. For the rest of her life, her middle finger was bent back, because you can carry two bombs on the middle finger and only one on the others. I could see
the tension in you as soon as we met. Our lives are written on our bodies,” she said.

  I wondered what was written on my body. Quarter-pounder with cheese, probably.

  “Close your eyes,” Chrissy said.

  Reaching from behind my head, she put her hands over my eyes. I stifled the giggles for a few moments, and then I started to let go. It was nice. It wasn’t as good as swimming, but it was still relaxing. My thoughts wandered. I thought of Lexi’s back as she ran through the gardens, of her standing on the fence, her wet hair gleaming in the fingernail of moonlight.

  Chrissy took her hands away, and I felt my aches and pains blossom again. “So, were you taking on my energy then, or something?” I asked.

  “Mmm,” she said.

  I turned around. Chrissy was frowning and staring at the grass.

  “Are you OK?” I asked.

  “What? Yes. I — Yes. I’ll be fine,” she said.

  I stood up, because Dad and Tash were coming toward us. Chrissy stood, too. I started walking, but when I realized Chrissy wasn’t following, I turned. She had her hand to her head, and she was swaying.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Oh, God, Daniel,” she said. Then she collapsed.

  Tash and Dad rushed over to help Chrissy, and I stood well back. She was out cold for a few moments. I could feel burning across my knuckles, and when I looked down, there were livid scrape marks on the skin. Dad ran back to the Pancake House to get some water while Tash knelt with her sister.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I said.

  “Don’t worry, Daniel,” Tash said calmly. “She’s going to be fine.”

  “Has this happened to her before?” I asked. “When she does her treatments?”

  “No,” Tash said. “No, to be honest. It hasn’t.”

  Chrissy had come round by the time Dad got back with the water. She sat up and drank from the bottle. She flinched when she saw me.

  “What happened?” I said. “What did I do?”

  “You didn’t do anything,” she said. She wore a dark, worried expression, but when she saw that I was looking at her, she made it into a weak smile. I knew about those fake smiles. I knew what they meant. The blood was throbbing in my leg, and I was beginning to feel weak. Weak with anger. Weak with fear.