by Matthew Crow
Amber didn’t seem to be aware that she had a body. She would just slump about in whatever position seemed most comfortable. Also she moved her face. The girls at school never moved their faces. They all seemed to spend their time blowing out through their lips in a stupid pout, like they were posing for a profile picture. The effect was off-putting. You could never tell what they thought, for one thing. There was no mistaking what Amber thought. Usually this was because she’d tell you within seconds of deciding herself. But you could see it on her face too, her easy smile and her easier scowl, and the way she’d narrow her eyes at people whenever they talked, as if she was a camera zooming in—closer and closer—until she could see exactly who they were, and exactly what they meant.
“My dad died, you know?” she said as I was studying her face again in the chill-out room. I snapped out of my daydream too quickly, like when you spring out of bed and realize you’ve forgotten how to walk. I felt my palms become damp and clammy. I had no idea what to say.
I wished she’d just thrown something at my head instead.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to break down on you or anything. I’m just saying, he died, that’s why he’s not here. And that’s why Mum’s . . . Mum.”
“Sorry,” I said. “How?”
“Heart attack,” she said, the whole time staring at the TV screen, scrolling quicker and quicker through channels. “Went to work one day and didn’t come home. Mum came to pick us up from school. She got a lift from one of her friends. She can’t drive. Well, she won’t. Worries about the pollution. But she came in a car that day, and then was silent all the way home.”
“How old were you?” I asked.
“Olivia’s age now. Ten. Ol was only in nursery at the time. It was stupid, though. We knew as soon as Mum picked us up that something was wrong. If she hadn’t wanted to tell us until we got home, why not just wait for school to finish?”
“Sorry,” I said again.
“You can stop apologizing, Francis. I’m just chatting.”
“I know. But it’s what you say, isn’t it?”
“Suppose,” she said, then turned to face me. “So I’m just saying, I know what it’s like when people die. I know that it’s just one less person at the dinner table, and they don’t take the whole world with them; it carries on like it always has, only a bit sadder for a bit. So that’s why I’m not scared.”
We were quiet again and Amber went back to scrolling through channels. She’d gone so far she was already at the adult ones that you needed a pin number to watch.
“I know what it’s like too,” I said eventually. “When someone dies.”
“Your dad died too?” she asked without looking at me.
“No,” I said. “He’s just not around.”
“Sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize.”
“Just what people say, isn’t it?” she said with a laugh, and put the TV to mute, turning to face me while I told her.
Emma died on a day trip to the seaside. She only ran off for a few seconds. She was there one minute, and the next there was just a huge red truck in her place, like she was a Transformer. Only a rubbish Transformer that made everyone cry and Mum howl.
Dad ran toward her and Mum held on to me so tightly that my nose bashed off her shoulder and started pouring with blood. The doctor put a face cast over it and it grew back in a weird shape, like a boomerang. We were seven when it happened. For years I hated Mum because of this. While the face brace was in situ people who didn’t know what had happened referred to me as Mankind (we were going through a wrestling phase) but mostly people just stayed out of our way. Mum cried a lot and spent days in bed. On the plus side Chris became brilliant at cooking. Some nights he’d do whole roasts, and he made gravy from scratch. Once Emma had been buried and the brace came off, my nose was still wonky, though. I blamed Mum twofold for this. Firstly, because I had inherited her Gallic profile. Secondly, for the break itself. But then, just after my fourteenth birthday, when Chris found my plastic surgery stash jar, he told me I looked like Serge Gainsbourg and showed me a photo of Jane Birkin. I didn’t mind so much after that.
For some reason I felt like such a fraud telling the story out loud. Telling it to somebody else. The way I made some bits bigger than they were, other bits smaller. It was like I was editing a film I’d already seen a dozen times, and even if my audience were none the wiser I’d always know which bits I’d skipped over or which I’d used one too many adjectives on. The whole time I was speaking it felt like I was describing somebody else. I thought I’d be upset. I’d never said it out loud before. Not in so many words. Never needed to. Never wanted to. In the past I’d always been happy keeping myself to myself. But with Amber everything felt different. Like the important bits only mattered if she knew about them. If she’d registered them and stored them alongside her important bits, so that they became important to her too—became her memories. I wanted her to remember the first time she heard about them, where she was when I told her. It was as if, in order to exist, I needed Amber to know exactly who I was, and to know me better than anybody else. Without that nothing else seemed to matter.
Amber seemed interested, and I didn’t want to disappoint her. She always looked at you when you spoke. Straight at you, which made you feel like what you said mattered, even if it didn’t; as long as Amber was listening there was reason to say it. It was made all the more intense by the way she hardly ever looked at people when she herself spoke. It was as if she never wanted anybody to be able to tell how much of what she said was true. Or maybe how much of what she said she meant.
“So that’s why Emma’s not here. And that’s why Mum’s . . . Mum,” I said. Amber laughed at this. So did I. It was a pleasing recovery if I say so myself. I was also keen that Amber didn’t think I was only telling her to drum up sympathy, or to get even with her for having a dead dad.
“Move over, Pretty Little Liars is on,” Kelly said, making her way into the chill-out room and destroying our moment.
“No,” Amber said. Kelly looked like she wanted to punch her. “This is our manor now. We’re taking over. The geek shall inherit the earth.”
“Eh?”
“Four legs good, two legs bad. Piss off!” Amber yelled.
“What are you going on about?” Kelly said, already resigned to having to catch the rerun.
“Animal Farm. The underdogs are rising. We’re taking over. You’d know that if you ever read.”
“I do read,” Kelly said defiantly.
“What?”
“Lauren Conrad.”
“Oh,” Amber said, delighted that Kelly was making this so easy for her. “Well, she is to reading what soy is to meat.”
“You’re a freak. Everyone thinks so.”
Amber barked at her three times as Kelly wandered off, muttering under her breath.
“That is how it’s done,” Amber said proudly, turning the TV back on.
“You’re crazy. You do know that, don’t you?” I said.
Amber seemed to take a moment to register the information. She narrowed her eyes, briefly, and furrowed her brow as I began to worry that I’d overstepped the mark.
“You know,” she said, after what felt like an eternity, “in the olden days doctors used to masturbate crazy women because they thought madness spawned from your fanny, like some really gobby yeast infection.”
Another silence.
I was not entirely sure how to react to this information. Amber was, though. Without warning she leaned over and kissed me on the mouth.
I’d never been kissed properly before. Not by someone who meant it. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it, but I wasn’t without my reservations. For one thing I suddenly became aware of how empty my mouth was, like some huge cavern that was nowhere near interesting enough for the exploration going on inside. I felt lacking, like
I should have had a small petting zoo or firework display going off on my tongue, just to keep the visitor interested. Also our teeth clacked together, and I could hear it magnified in my head. Teeth never seem to clack in films; it’s all smooth running there. Ours did. At one point I thought I might have chipped a crown.
When we were finished the room was too quiet even though there were clearly several subjects that needed to be addressed. Amber sat back, closer to me than she had been before but still at a distance.
“Amber . . .” I said. As the man in our relationship I had decided that it was my responsibility to bring such serious issues to the fore. “Just to make things clear . . . and there’s no pressure . . . but are you my girlfriend now?”
She looked at me and rolled her eyes.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Francis,” she said, and put her hand in mine.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sometimes whole days would be wasted, written off as we lay in our beds after treatment. The whole world would stop mattering to us. All we had to occupy ourselves with was firstly, trying not to throw up, and then perversely trying with all our might to throw up, if only to release some of whatever was inside us, whatever made every second for us feel so ghastly it was sometimes hard to breathe.
On days like this Mum would sit beside me for hours on end. She wouldn’t go home. She wouldn’t even go to work. She just sat there like a guard, taking the measure of everyone who came past the curtain she’d made sure to draw, making sure she knew the exact intention behind their visit and what they had achieved by disturbing us.
During these days she’d rest her hand on mine and whisper things to me while she tried not to cry. Sometimes Chris would come in and sit with me while Mum curled up on the tiny armchair beside the bed and nodded in and out of sleep. He’d take his coat off and cover her with it to stop her from getting a chill. Other times he’d make sure he brought a thermos and a travel kit he had fleeced off an airplane, so that when she woke up she could have a coffee and brush her teeth. All the while they’d be talking to me, talking and talking about things we used to do, about things we were going to do, about things that were happening at home. I would try to answer them but my voice would give way; then they’d pat me on the hand and tell me to rest. It’s hard, though, wanting to answer when you can’t, like having an itch on your back you can never quite get to. The funny thing is I only ever wanted to say sorry the whole time they were talking; sorry that I was in hospital, sorry that they were there with me. During those days it was as though trying to say sorry was the only thing I could focus on, other than the pain.
Then out of nowhere it would pass. You’d wake up from a nap and suddenly wonder why you felt so different, why the world seemed to be in Technicolor again. Then you’d remember that it was because the pain had gone, even if it was only for a bit, and every second didn’t have to be lived through the murky fog of bleak agony.
“You had a night of it, brave lad,” Mum said to me as I woke up one morning, feeling fresh after two grueling days. She moved over to me and helped me sit up, kissing me on the forehead as she did it.
“You smell sour,” I told her.
“I had to use one of those wet wipes Chris brought in. Zesty,” she said, propping my pillows up behind me.
“Oh. Where is he?”
“Time off for good behavior. He’s downstairs getting some food. Do you want anything to eat?” she said as Jackie came in to check some numbers on the machine next to my bed.
“No,” I said, feeling my stomach flip.
“You’ll have to eat something sooner or later,” Mum said. “I know, I know, shut up, Mum . . .” she said when she realized that I was not willing to enter into negotiations on the subject.
A bit later on I had managed to freshen myself up. Chris had hauled me along to the bathroom and I had used the facilities and splashed my face. When we got back to the unit someone had changed the bedding as the pillow was strewn with stray clumps of my hair. The replacement was a new bright white version, like nothing had happened.
“I brought in my shaver,” Chris told me. Mum turned away and pretended she was looking out the window but I knew she was crying. “If you want to get it over with . . . you know, like pulling off a Band-Aid? We can do it together. You do me first, and then I’ll do you.”
“But you don’t need it. Yours won’t fall out.”
“I know, but it’ll be fun,” he said. I knew he didn’t mean this. Chris was proud of his hair. He had bangs that he took care of the way ancient Japanese gardeners took care of bonsai trees. “Then it’ll be like a game. We can race each other to see whose grows back first,” he said, putting newspaper on the floor around the bed.
“Only if you’re sure?”
“’Course I’m sure. It’ll be a right laugh. Some brothers get tattoos together, but we’ll be scalped. Now that’s love,” he said, sliding sheets of newspaper beneath the bed. “Do you want to go first or shall I?”
I sat up in the bed and spun around so that my legs hung over the side facing Amber, only I couldn’t see her because the curtain had been pulled.
“Wait,” I said as Chris angled me so that the back of my head was resting on his chest.
I yelled for Mum to come and open the curtain so that Amber could bear witness to my transformation. Mum did as she was told, and after some coaxing Amber agreed to come and watch. Mum gave her a hand and helped her up onto my bed.
“It’s okay. I was reading in one of Kelly’s magazines that the convict look is in this season anyway. . . . Everyone’s going wild for Death Row chic,” she said, eating some of my grapes.
“What you chatting about, Amber?” Kelly yelled through from behind her curtain, but no one paid her any attention.
“I think it’ll give me a bit of an edge, to be honest.”
“Grrrrrr,” Amber said, not entirely enthusiastically.
“I’m just going to get a coffee,” Mum said shakily. “Does anyone want anything?” she asked, but had gone before any of us had a chance to answer.
“Ready?” Chris asked, ignoring her departure.
I said yes and he turned on the shaver, which was surprisingly loud. I felt it scratch across my head, and felt myself grow colder as wisps of hair fell to the ground like glitter at the end of a concert.
“Going anywhere nice on holiday this year?” Chris asked. I didn’t answer him, but Amber and I both started laughing until he got annoyed and said I was putting him off.
“You have to hold your head still or it’ll slip and cut you. The last thing I need is for you to start hemorrhaging on me. It really wouldn’t look good on my resume.”
I apologized and he said it was okay, so long as I didn’t move my head again.
“In all seriousness, though, I do think I missed my vocation. I am blitzing this,” Chris said as he pulled the razor gently from my forehead to the base of my neck.
“Though we wouldn’t want to stereotype, would we?” Amber said.
“Quite,” Chris agreed, and gave her a wink.
He leaned me over the side of the bed, supporting me with one hand across my chest. With the other he brushed away the stray bits of shaved hair from my bald head. His hand felt odd on my freshly exposed scalp, like I had been lobotomized and he was fondling my brain.
“There, that’ll do you,” he said, sitting me back up in bed. “You think you’re up to doing me?”
I looked at Amber and she widened her eyes. “You know you want to. . . .”
I did. I really did.
I pressed it first to the front of his head and began slowly pulling it back from his bangs. The razor made a different sound as it sliced through the first few strands of hair, and became harder to pull. Chris’s shoulders tensed as I dragged the blades back toward the crown of his head.
Then I stopped and remembered everything I had mean
t to say before.
“I’m sorry,” I said, holding the razor tightly in place. “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.” I didn’t say what for. Didn’t say that I was sorry I was ill. That I was sorry he and Mum had to be there all the time, and had to worry all the time. Didn’t say that I was sorry that everything had changed because of me, and that Chris’s hair was being ruined just because mine was. I just said sorry, and hoped that he’d be able to work out the rest for himself.
Everyone went quiet except for the razor, which kept buzzing like a bee trapped in a jam jar.
Amber looked at me worriedly and at Chris, who tensed and then flinched.
“It’s okay,” he said, holding up his hand and taking the razor from me.
He stood up, still holding the razor against his head, so that I could lie back down.
“Bloody hell, Francis, it’s stuck,” he said, yanking hard at the blades. “Jesus, it really is! I’m serious. . . .”
Amber put her hand over her mouth to stop herself from laughing. Chris yanked at the razor and swore at the top of his voice as it ripped some hair from his head. A smooth runway of pink flesh led from his forehead to the crown of his head.
He grabbed a mirror, looking panicked, and swore again as he observed the damage.
“I’m sorry,” I said between giggles once Chris began to smirk even though I could tell he was aggravated. “I’m really sorry.”
“What’s going on?” Mum said, coming back with a coffee. She had put on more makeup since she’d been gone and looked better for it.
“Sweeney Todd here developed a conscience halfway across my skull, that’s what,” Chris said, slumping down on my bed as he teased his fingers over the bald patch, and grimaced.
