Closer (4 page)

Turn it off, then turn it on again, louder. Mrs. Thing next door bangs on the wall, I stick two fingers up at the wall and turn it louder, just to annoy her. Then switch it off. Don't want her coming round again. 

Go upstairs, at least it's exercise so I take them two at a time. I open the door to Hannah's room. It's tidy, but not as bare as mine. There's a few teddies on a shelf. Hannah's left a book on her bed, not a printed book, a note book or something. I go in, treading carefully even though I know she's out. She hates anyone in her room, specially me. I look at the book. It's got her writing on it. I can't help opening it. It's a diary, a sort of journal I think. I know you mustn't look at people's private things but I look anyway. 

At the top of the latest page, it says: “What's he doing with M now? Thought I saw him in there with her, shutting the door.” 

Quick, get out. But before I go, I can't help seeing the next line, the last one she's written. 

“I'LL KILL HIM ONE DAY FOR WHAT HE'S DONE TO ME.” 

Shut the book, get out, slam the door, downstairs, TV on, grab the blanket, huddle up, stare at the picture. Mad. It's all mad. Hannah, she can't, don't think about it. Don't think. 

What does she mean? 

It's all stupid. 

She's stupid. 

Go to the good place. 

A while later I'm stiff and cold from being still. I go in the kitchen. 

Apple, carrot, yogurt. 

I read the writing on the yogurt pot. Have to decide which to eat. Go to the fridge, full, stuffed it is, like a lardy old woman who's eaten all this shit and might throw up any minute, explode even. Cheese, bacon, butter, chicken, milk, take it all out, spread it round on the floor. Tempted to stuff the lot in my mouth. So hungry. Starving. Quick, put it all back, messy like it was before. All of it. 

Back to the table. 

Apple, carrot, yogurt. 

Move the apple to the left, grab my keys and phone and head for the front door.

I love it when we have a new art project, and there's going to be a new one today. I love drawing ideas sheets and making mock-ups and writing about them. My marks are always high for art and Sally Griffin usually says good things about my work when she goes round commenting. 

Sally Griffin is very short. Her hair is wiry and all over the place, like she's had an electric shock recently or something, and she wears weird clothes that look like they're from charity shops. 

Chloe and I are first in and she tells us to fetch big sheets of paper and some chunky pens and wait for the others, then when they arrive she writes the subject on the board: family. 

For the first time ever in art I want to get out of here. I come to art to get away from my family, not to draw stupid pictures of them. I so do not want to do this project, even though she hasn't explained it yet. I think of playing the death card: my granma just died and I can't possibly do this. That's what Hannah would do, she's such a lying slag. But it's nothing to do with Granma dying. 

“Right guys, that's your subject for the next two weeks. One rule: no representations. No photos, no drawings of faces.” Sally Griffin is pacing round the art room as she talks. Everyone's watching her, her arms are drawing pictures in the air. “Start off with an ideas sheet, then go into 3D.” 

I want to say I feel sick, but there's no way I can miss art or being with Sally Griffin for two hours, so I don't. 

“But what if you hate your family?” I'm surprised it's Chloe asking that. Chloe's family is the family I'd like to have grown up with most of all. She's ruining my fantasy. 

“Yeah, do we have to do this?” I don't usually have trouble with art projects, but I want to push the boundaries. 

“Are you all right, Mel?” Sally Griffin lands by our table and bends towards Chloe and me. She smells spicy, like curry and incense or something. 

“Fine,” is all I can manage. I don't look her in the eye. 

“Go for it then. Don't think, draw.” She's off again, checking everyone has paper. 

I look round the room. I'm not the only one who seems a bit slow to start. But some people are already scribbling on their ideas sheets, mainly in thick black pen. My head feels like a fog, like I can't breathe. 

I look at the white sheet of paper and it feels like this huge blank space and I want to screw it up or rip it into pieces. Then I grab the pen and make the lines in the middle, lines and lines until the pen starts to go through the paper and what I see is doors. I see doors and lines so I draw a big door in black then more and more doors overlapping each other and lines between the doors and then the biggest door in the left-hand bottom corner. I draw locks and padlocks all over it and I get a red pen and write KEEP OUT on it. The whole sheet is covered and my head feels better and I sit back and look at it. 

“More,” says Sally Griffin as she sweeps past and she gives me another sheet. It takes a while to get rid of wanting to draw the people in my family but I do in the end. I draw a black filled-in five-pointed star in the middle then kind of curves to show people facing outwards with their backs to each other, then loads of ladders, overlapping each other like the doors in the first sheet, going up into the sky and down into black holes in the ground, only of course you can't see the ladders when they've gone down into the holes, so they're just black filled-in circles, some of them with holes where the pen goes through because I'm pressing really hard. Then in the bottom left-hand corner I draw a red circle and a red ladder going down into it. 

I take a break then and look round at other people's work. It's totally quiet, except for the sound of breathing and felt-tips on paper. Chloe's drawing looks just like her house, she's showing all the mess and the junk climbing the walls and there's no space. I've never thought of it like that. 

Sally Griffin says we can use the resources now so I head over to them and choose three small boxes and two bigger ones, only they're all pretty small like they fit in your hand easily, then one big one they'll all go inside. I play around with all the shapes then start with the craft knife and the glue. 

By lunch-break I'm completely lost in it. 

“Time to go,” says Sally Griffin and everyone else packs up and starts talking. I feel far away from them all. I'm not ready. 

“I don't want lunch today, I want to do some more.” Sally Griffin smiles and nods and picks up her straw bag and heads off. Chloe and the others go to eat and I've got the place to myself and it's great, really quiet and my head feels like it's expanding or something. 

It's really hard to leave it all behind. I find a place on the side and put my name on a label in front of it so nobody else uses the stuff. 

It looks like a pile of junk. It is a pile of junk and I want to sweep it all up and bin it. 

Sally Griffin gets back as I'm about to do that. She comes and stands by me, quiet, still, looking at my work. 

“Looks tough.” 

I sling my bag over my shoulder. 

“It's okay.” If she's nice to me I'll cry, I know I will. 

“If you ever want to talk…” 

I take a deep breath and hold it in and look down at my shoes. “Nothing I can't handle.” But my voice sounds shaky and she's still looking at me when I turn and leave the room.

I run after the others and catch up with Chloe. We head off to the playing field. She's got some sandwiches but I'm not eating. We find a bench and some of the others gather round. I'm sure it's not me they like, but it's good to have company. We're talking about some of the guys, and TV and stuff, and I forget about everything else and I'm laughing at something Ellie says when I see Raj doing some circuits. 

He is so committed. I don't know how he does it, or why. But I like it. 

“Mel, loverboy's on the run.” 

“Look at those pecs.” 

“Look at that arse.” 

They're all laughing and I shrink back on the bench. Don't want him to see I'm with this lot. 

“Getting lost,” I mutter to Chloe as I slide off and double back round to the fence. I hover there waiting to see if Raj will stop for me. 

And he does. He lopes up towards me and slides to a halt, grinning and wiping the sweat off his face with his tee-shirt. 

“Hi babe!” 

He leans by me on the fence, breathing hard. 

“How many have you got to go?” 

“Another five, then I'm through and off to English. You?” 

“Yeah maths, then I'm done for the day.” 

“Want to meet up later?” 

“Can't. I have to go home and sit with George while Mum and Dad get ready for the funeral.” 

“Sure – I'll be at the park until 6 if you can get away. Team practice.” 

Is that a date? Is that what he calls a date? Watching him run around the park? Am I too easy or something? 

“Yeah, maybe.” I turn away and stop myself from looking back at him. When I'm far enough, I look. He's back running, and he gives me a wave. 

So he was looking too. 

But there's no way I'm going down the park tonight.

It's a week since Granma died. The house has been so quiet. No rows, no music, even the telly is on mute most of the time. Mum and Dad have been rushing round making all the arrangements for the funeral. It's at two o'clock so we're all off school for the day. It's a pain, I'm missing double art and I want to get on with my project, but maybe having a day with my weird family will give me some more ideas. 

There's loads of food downstairs. Mum went to Tesco's and bought huge trays of sausage rolls and sandwiches and stuff. It's all laid out on the kitchen table with cling-film on it. Looks like exhibits in a museum or something. Dad took care of the drinks. I think he's stocking up. There's no way all those bottles will go in one afternoon with about six people coming. Nobody knew Granma after all, only us. 

Dad's looking pale and he's not talking much, like he's gone inside. I suppose he's an orphan now, no parents left, not even any uncles and aunts or brothers and sisters. He must feel lonely. He's come into my room late once or twice this week, to talk. I like it, I think, whatever Hannah wrote in her stupid book. He says he can't talk to anyone like he can to me, and he's telling me stuff about Granma and Grandad I didn't know before. 

“They called it shell-shock in those days,” he said last night. “He'd stare into space, like he wasn't there. He wouldn't talk about what happened, not ever. And he spent all his time in the shed, making things nobody would ever use. I used to go out there with him. As long as I didn't talk it was okay, if I helped him with what he was doing and kept quiet. But then there were times when he let rip at me and it was as if he didn't see me at all, he lashed out.” 

“Did he hit you?” 

“Let's not talk about that. I want to remember the good bits, sitting with him in his shed putting boxes and engines together in the quiet. The smell of meths and metal and oil.” 

I think Dad's like Grandad, shell-shocked. If you try to talk to him about what's wrong he finds a way of getting out of it, or goes blank. And I feel a bit like him with Grandad when he was little. It's okay while I sit quiet and listen. 

Now Mum's calling from downstairs and all the doors open and we go down. We look like a bunch of crows and I'm trying not to laugh. It's not that I didn't care at all about Granma, but she was really old and she hadn't even spoken to anyone for years. I can't see what this is all about. 

I've got my black school trousers on with a grey tee-shirt and a black jacket of Mum's that's way too big, but she says at least it hasn't got writing on it that shouldn't be seen dead at a funeral. Then she realises what she said and goes red. 

George is in his black tracksuit bottoms which is weird, and a black sweatshirt which is going to get so hot. And Hannah looks like normal. She's always ready for a funeral. Mum and Dad are stressed, and Dad gives me a quick hug which is strange because nobody else is hugging or anything and I'm not crying. They won't let me bring my MP3 or my mobile. I am going to be so bored. 

The funeral's in the crematorium, which means Granma's body is going to be burned up. There's a big chimney, and I wonder how it all happens and I want to ask but I know this isn't the time. 

The coffin's really small, like nobody would fit into it, and I think Granma's curled up inside like she was in the hospital when I last saw her, though I'm not sure there's room for her knees. I wonder if they had to uncurl her somehow to get her in, then that's too gruesome for words. 

There's a queue of hearses waiting for funerals, and everybody has half an hour before the next lot arrive. We have to wait while the last one finishes then they go out of the other end of the building. It's like Alton Towers, you go in at the entrance and out a different way. Only different things happen when you're inside. Our family looks really small, just us and a few old people. 

We all get out of the car, and the coffin's in this huge black hearse with men in suits from the undertakers getting it out. We watch them, and I wonder what would happen if they dropped the coffin and Granma fell out. I wonder what she's wearing in there. 

We shuffle inside behind the undertakers' men. I'm looking at my feet as we walk in, hoping it will be over soon. The place smells funny. I don't know what it is, like furniture polish and air freshener and flowers and something dead, all the dead people I suppose. There's a cd player and some crap music on. I don't know what kind of music Granma liked, but nobody could want this. There's flowers and a table with the coffin on and I remember how in some book I read the coffin's open and everybody has to walk past it to look at the person inside and I'm so glad we don't have to do that.