Dandelion Clocks (16 page)

The house is really quiet. I've found this the hardest thing to cope with since everything changed. It's not like we were the noisiest family in the world or anything, but when I walked in from school there would be talking and the noise of our house – washing machine whirring in the corner, back door slamming in the wind and threatening to break the glass, feet running up and down the stairs. I remember all the times I got mad because I couldn't find a quiet place to just
think
. I'd do anything now to be standing here in the hall with the sounds of life going on around me. Now I have too much time to think – I'm fed up with thinking.

So I've developed a sort of habit. First thing I do when I walk in the door at three thirty is shout ‘hello' out of the back door. Dad can't hear me
from the studio and I don't want to disturb him because he has to finish his work before Isaac returns, but it makes me feel I'm actually home. Next, I go into the living room and turn the TV on – not really loudly but just so I can hear it when I'm in the kitchen. After that, I put on the kettle (loudest kettle in the universe, Mum used to say) and go upstairs to Isaac's room. I never used to go inside his room voluntarily – all the stinky socks on the floor are enough to make your eyes water – but now I creep in and turn on his iPod. I make sure it's on shuffle and the volume on high.

When I've done all this, I go into my own room and get changed. I always have tons of homework so I take my books down to the kitchen. I've experimented to know exactly how loud I need the TV and Isaac's iPod – so that when I'm in the kitchen I can hear enough to make the house feel less empty, but not so much that I can't do my work.

Except I can't really concentrate on the maths problem in front of me, because something a little bit brilliant happened today. I wasn't expecting it – in fact I had to ask him to repeat himself cos I didn't actually think I'd heard him properly. It's been so long since I had a real conversation with
anyone at school that I'm surprised I could even remember how to speak without sounding a total idiot. When Ben walked over to me I assumed he needed to find something out, like when our English project is due in. When he asked me how I was doing, I didn't really know what to say. I think I muttered some randomly stupid comment like ‘very well, thank you', cos I suddenly felt shy and a bit embarrassed. Which is a new feeling for me right now – I haven't really felt anything for a while.

So when he said that he was going to the cinema at the weekend and did I want to go with him, I was a bit distracted and didn't hear him. He stood there for a moment, turning redder and redder, until I realized that I'd missed something and asked him to say it again. Of course, when I heard what he was saying I instantly managed to outdo him in the blushing stakes – I massively hate that feeling of boiling lava flooding across your face, knowing that you can't do a single thing to stop it. After all that drama with Alice, I didn't think that Ben even liked me any more – turns out I was wrong.

I wish I had someone to tell. This is the biggest event of the decade and I'm sitting here all on my own with only my stupid maths homework for
company. I know that Alice would be pleased for me – I saw on Facebook that she's going out with Jack. Her new profile picture is of Jack giving her a piggyback. She's laughing like mad and waving at the camera. It looks like they're having a lot of fun. I know she'd have loved telling me about Jack for herself if I'd answered her messages, but it's never felt like the right time to call her. And what would I say? Much easier to keep hiding out in the library at lunchtimes and pretend that I haven't read her messages on Facebook. I like seeing what she's up to, though – I like seeing her happy. And actually, I secretly look forward to Friday nights when Alice sends me a long, chatty email about who's going out with who and what she's been doing all week. She wrote to me at the start and said she understood that I didn't want to talk about it. She said that she wouldn't mention it if that's what I wanted, but she was there for me when I was ready to hang out again. However long it took. I bet she never thought it'd take this long, though.

Anyway, it'd be great to have someone to talk to about today. I could tell Dad and Isaac, but Isaac won't really get it and Dad will just start freaking out about me going out with a boy. And he might
even think he needs to have ‘that conversation' with me, which would be excruciating for both of us.

No, I'll just have to keep this one to myself. It's probably not such a big deal anyway, although, for some reason that I'm not sure about, I feel a bit different. Everything you ever see about liking someone, or them liking you, shows hearts – big, beating hearts, lovesick hearts, broken hearts. My heart feels just like it did this morning – but my tummy feels weird. There's a tiny warm little ember, burning away in there, and it's making me feel a little less lonely and like maybe there's more to my day than doing homework.

I finally finish my maths problems and sit for a while at the kitchen table, thinking about Ben. I remember that day before the funeral when I saw him post an envelope through our front door. I didn't want to open it at the time and shoved it in the back of the drawer next to my bed. Now, though, I feel curious, and before I can change my mind I race upstairs and into my room. It only takes me a second to find it, a bit crumpled but otherwise fine.

I sit on my bed and carefully peel back the
envelope. We were sent about a million cards when it happened, all saying things like
In Deepest Sympathy
and
Sorry For Your Loss
. They were really depressing, those cards – not a single bright colour between them and most of them with pictures of lilies. Mum hated lilies. She said they were unnatural and fake and they smelt like misery. Not one person sent a picture of a daffodil or a primrose or a dandelion.

Ben hasn't sent me anything like those cards, though. I pull out a thick piece of folded paper and turn it over. There's a photograph stuck on the front and I can tell straight away that Ben made this himself. I look at the photo for a while, tracing my fingers over the faces. It was taken on the last day of term before Christmas, back when everything was good. I can't remember who took it but it wasn't Ben because he's in the picture, pulling a daft face, one of his arms thrown round Jack. Alice is in front of them, totally unaware that Jack is making bunny-ears behind her head. And I am there too. Right in the middle. I am looking at the camera and doing my best dramatic pose and I am laughing. We're all laughing.

I open up the card and read what Ben has written. He's a boy, so it's not exactly poetry. He's
sorry. He doesn't know what to say. He's scared about making it worse. He thinks I must be really strong. He wants me to remember that I've got friends. He's sorry. I close it up and look again at the picture. It's perfect. Mum would have loved this card – if it were hers she'd have slipped it inside her diary and kept it forever, however long that might be.

I walk across the room to my pinboard. It used to be full of my favourite photographs but it's been bare for a while now. I pin Ben's card right in the middle and then head out to the hall. Isaac's got really bad taste in music, I think to myself, so I brave his room again and turn his iPod off, navigating carefully round his stinky, special box that today is slap-bang in front of his door. I look around his room and smile – it really is disgusting, but I guess it's how he wants it. As I turn to leave, I catch sight of the memory box that Dad gave him, poking out from under his bed. I know it's an invasion of his privacy, but he'll never know if I have a sneaky little peek inside.

I kneel down on the floor (having flicked his stinky socks away with my foot first) and pull out the box. I open the lid. The old sock and the teaspoon have gone, although the friendship
bracelet and the bookmark are still there. Next to them is a picture that Isaac has drawn showing Mum, Dad, him and me. He's drawn little stick figures and labelled them with our names, and then drawn a great big circle round us all. We look a bit demented, with huge heads and tiny bodies, but we've all got crazily big smiles and we look safe, snuggled up together inside the circle. I pick up the drawing and see that underneath it is a Post-it note. I recognize the handwriting instantly and know that it's a note from Mum to Isaac – she used to put them in our lunchbox if she thought we might have a hard day.

I sit for a while, staring at the picture until my right leg goes to sleep and it starts to get cold. Dad will have taken Isaac to get our Friday night takeaway and they'll be back soon. We've had to make quite a few new rules around here since Mum died, but Isaac's coped really well, specially as some of our old rules have stayed the same. I suppose we're doing OK – Dad can work from home so he's around for Isaac and me, and Leah comes to see us as much as she can. I know they all miss Mum as much as I do, but they haven't stopped doing everything like I have. Sometimes I see Dad looking really sad but he'll see me watching
and tell me he's just remembered something brilliant about Mum, and that it makes him feel happy and sad at the same time and actually, that's OK. I think what a relief it would be to find something funny, or allow myself to remember something good.

Before I can think too much about what I'm doing, I put Isaac's picture on the floor and go back downstairs. I stop in the hall and pick up the phone. I'm not sure what'll happen but I know that I'm tired of feeling lonely and unhappy. I think about what Mum said to me, that last day – that she knows I'm ready to live life loudly. I definitely haven't been doing
that
recently – more like creeping around as quietly as possible, trying not to attract any attention in case something else bad happens. Don't get me wrong. I'm not ready to party. But I am starting to realize that I won't forget Mum if I'm not busy being utterly miserable all the time.

Alice picks up the phone after the second ring. I tell her that I've missed her and ask if there's any chance we could meet up? She tells me that it's about time, she's been waiting for my phone call and we've got a lot of catching up to do, so best if I bring my toothbrush and sleeping bag to her
house tomorrow. We chat for a bit and arrange to meet at our corner in the morning.

I put the phone down and take a deep breath. I feel lighter – Alice still likes me. I am a friend, I am part of something good. I walk back upstairs and into Isaac's room, keen to put his memory box away before he comes home. Kneeling down by his bed, I carefully pick up his family portrait and look at it one more time. It would feel pretty good to be smiling like I am on his crazy picture.

Just as I'm putting it back in, I see that there's something else, lying in the corner of the box. It's a bit squashed and it's really dried out – but there's no mistaking that it's a bald, naked dandelion head on a withered stem. Isaac put one of the dandelions from Mum's room into his memory box.

And suddenly, memories of that day and a thousand other days come flooding into my head. I try to resist them at first because I don't think I can handle any more pain, but then I realize that even though I'm crying, I don't feel quite so empty inside. I remember Mum, laughing her head off as she pointed at all the pots that we'd placed around her room. I remember how she cuddled me and how she smelt. I remember how much I love her and how, even when I was mad at her,
she always let me know that she loved me and was proud of me.

And I think, kneeling there on Isaac's floor, that maybe it's going to be all right. I finally understand that Mum has gone and that, just like Isaac, I've got my own way of remembering her. I know that, even though we'll still have bad days, days when it's hard to remember how we ever used to be happy, that it's OK to think about Mum and to have fun and to laugh. I think that maybe, somewhere, Mum knows that Ben asked me out today and is cheering loudly (while telling me to be sensible, not wear too much make-up, charge my phone battery and definitely tell Dad where I'm going!).

I leave Isaac's room, head into my bedroom and take my own memory box out from the wardrobe. I put it on the bed, remove the lid and pick up the pile of diaries I've hidden carefully inside. I find the last diary, from 1989, and open it. I want to read the last thing that Mum wrote and I'm really hoping it's something amazing that I can remember forever. I skim through all the entries that I've already looked at and then stop. The rest of the diary is just a mass of blank pages with an occasional scribbled note, saying something really boring like
cinema at 7.30
or
choir practice
.

I start to flick through the pages, fighting the prickle of tears that I can feel behind my eyes. I wanted Mum's final words to be important, to mean something to me. As I get towards the back of the diary a piece of paper falls out on the floor. I kneel down and unfold it, and at first I can't figure out what it is. It's all crumpled and there are two different styles of handwriting – I recognize one as Mum's but I don't know who the other one belongs to. I start reading and realize it's a note, passed between Mum and her best friend, Beth, when they were fifteen.