Heartbeat Away (9 page)

Shortly before breaktime, Mrs Andrews finally susses out that I'm not actually ill, so she sends me back to join my class. There are about ten minutes left before the bell goes so I dive into the girls' loos and lock myself in a cubicle.

Completely unhygienic, and the last place I'd choose to spend my time, it's the only place I can think of where I can get away from everyone. I get a teen mag out of my backpack and spread it over the lid of the toilet seat, careful not to touch anything, then sit down on it. For the next five minutes, I use up the last of my anti-bacterial wipes to thoroughly clean my hands.

I stare miserably around the graffiti-scrawled cubicle and catch sight of the words
BECKI SIMMONS IS A SI CO
scribbled several times in huge letters with a thick black marker pen. I close my eyes and desperately try to visualise myself somewhere else, anywhere but this depressing, smelly toilet cubicle.

Within seconds, I'm looking at a big wire-fenced space. It's floodlit and the night air is chilly. Out of the blackness, I catch glimpses of faces with blurred features. There's a fleeting glance or nod or gesture from people who seem to know me as well as I'm sure I know them.

Escaping into my other world still frightens and disturbs me, and I jump as the breaktime bell rings shrilly and the
real world suddenly intrudes. Outside in the corridor, doors bang and loud voices erupt as everyone spills out of the classrooms. I shudder as my vision fades.

I begin to spend a lot more time on my own at school. You'd think that this would be pretty difficult in a place where eighteen hundred kids and an army of teachers spend seven hours a day, five days a week, but I soon discover that there's plenty of truth in the saying ‘you can be alone in a crowd'.

I sit at a single desk at the back of the classroom in most lessons, eat a packed lunch in the cloakroom on my own instead of braving the dinner hall, and hide in the girls' changing rooms during assembly. I get out of PE by insisting to Miss Baudelaire that I have to be very careful not to overdo it with my new heart. Petrified she'll be responsible for giving me a heart attack if I so much as pick up a netball, she sends me straight to the library, where I sit out of sight behind the shelves.

But I'm fine. Really, I am. The less contact I have with anyone at school, the better. Not only will I be unable to hear all the stories people are making up about me, I'll also keep away from all the germs they're carrying.

Anyway, to be honest, I don't have to worry too much about avoiding other people, because most of them give me a wide berth anyway. People I used to be friendly with look away or change direction when they see me coming. Of course, Masher and Shannon keep up a constant barrage of teasing but luckily, apart from registration, we're only together in a few other lessons. I soon learn to avoid the places where I know they hang out, and if I see either of them heading my way I try to disappear before they see me. I'm still walking to school, but I don't see Leah, Alesha and Jodie any more. I guess they take a different route now.

I'm still seeing the park, the house with shutters, and lots of other places too. Sometimes I see a tall blond-haired girl and other people that I can't put names to. So, although I have no control over what I see, at least I have company. For better or worse, I'm not alone.

‘See you later, then!'

‘Mind how you go, Becky, and say hello to Leah's dad for me,' Mum calls from the kitchen. ‘Ask how his new job's going.'

‘I will.'

These two short words fly out of my mouth so easily, but leave behind a nasty aftertaste. But it's too late now. I pick up my bag and gently close the front door behind me.

Sam's waiting for me at the end of my road. I take a deep breath and slap on a smile in the hope it will dispel my guilty conscience. After a truly horrible week at school, the thought of seeing him has been the only thing that's been keeping me going.

‘Hey, Becky!'

‘Hi, Sam.'

‘They let you out then?' he asks with a smile.

I nod hesitantly.

‘So what do you want to do?' he asks.

‘Shall we go back to the park?' I hear myself say, feeling unnerved as if something or someone is pulling me there.

‘My favourite place,' Sam replies cheerfully, peering down the main road. ‘We can probably get a bus from here . . . or a tube or something.'

‘No, let's walk,' I tell him, secretly shaking off a small shiver. Getting on a bus again, or, worse still, a crowded tube train, would be my worst nightmare.

It feels good to be walking with Sam and for the first time in a week I start to relax and even catch myself laughing once or twice.

‘You hungry?' he asks when we finally reach the park. It's already long past midday and breakfast is just a faint memory.

‘Starving.'

From the snack van, we buy a giant-sized bag of chips between us, and a couple of fizzy drinks. I pick up the tomato-shaped sauce bottle and I'm about to squirt it all over our chips but suddenly stop.

‘Whoops. Sorry. Forgot you really hate ketchup —' I say, quickly putting the bottle down.

Sam stares at me in surprise. ‘How d'you know that?' he asks.

I give a nervous giggle, but inside I'm panicking. How
do
I know? I think desperately.

‘Um . . . I . . . I don't but . . . well obviously . . . you look like the sort of boy who can't stand the stuff,' I bluff.

‘You're right,' he says with a smile and a brief, wary glance at me. ‘So, Little Miss Psychic, what else do you know about me?'

I shrug, faking a laugh, as I pick up a chip and pop it in my mouth. Everyone at school already thinks I'm a nutcase. There's no way I'm going to let Sam come to the same conclusion. ‘Not a lot,' I say as casually as I can. ‘I'm about as psychic as an old potato.'

We walk up to the old bandstand, sit down together on its painted wooden steps and finish our chip picnic looking down at the boating lake, our faces bathed in the warm, clear spring sunshine.

I pick up the last chip. ‘How about we save this to tempt that old monster up from the depths?'

I turn to Sam but see he's lost in thought.

‘Sam?'

As he smiles back at me, I see the sadness in his eyes.

‘What's wrong?' I ask.

‘Nothing.' He shrugs.

‘D'you want to go?'

‘No.'

‘What's the matter?'

‘I was just thinking about someone I knew.' He pulls a face, sweeps his hand through his hair, brushing it roughly out of his eyes then gives a small sigh.

‘Who?'

‘You won't know him.'

I feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as a cold sensation floods through my body. ‘Tell me. Please.'

He's silent for a few seconds. ‘My friend, Callum, died about six months ago,' he says quietly. ‘We were best mates.'

‘I'm so sorry.'

‘Yeah. Me too. He was the one that came with me to find that fish.' He pauses and bites his lip. ‘Sometimes . . . most of the time . . . I feel I'm going to find Callum here, waiting for me, like he's just been away for a while, or something.'

I put my hand gently on his shoulder, not knowing what to say.

‘He was only fifteen,' he adds fiercely. ‘People shouldn't die when they're that age. There should be a law against it.' His face takes on the same angry look I saw in my vision of him.

And then it strikes me, like a bolt from the blue. Suddenly I know for sure that I am only alive because Sam's best friend is dead. Beating away inside my body is Callum's heart.

A chill spreads through me as I realise the visions I'm having are Callum's memories. Shocked by this idea, I frantically remind myself I've got his heart beating inside me, not his brain. I don't need to be an A* student in biology to know that the brain is where memories are processed and stored, not the heart.

Yet it finally makes some kind of sense. I saw Callum's best friend and this park, long before meeting him here for real.

I realise that all the other places and people I've seen must have something to do with Callum too. I think about how I've stopped eating meat and felt I had to paint my room. Where did that come from? Callum too?

Fearfully, I start to wonder how else Callum's heart might be affecting me. Am I changing? Becoming someone different? Shannon's taunt about me having a bad heart is still ringing in my ears, filling me with dreadful thoughts. I quickly try to shake off my alarm. Callum was Sam's best
friend so he must have been a good person. Mustn't he?

I can't stop thinking about Callum as we walk home. What was he really like? My head is pounding with a ton of conflicting thoughts and fears. There's so much I desperately want to find out about him, but I'm scared of upsetting Sam more by bombarding him with questions.

We reach the end of my road and say goodbye. We arrange to meet again and, as I hurry off, Sam calls after me that he'll text me. As I rush into our garden, I check my watch and give a sigh of relief. I'm five minutes early.

‘So how's Rick's new job?' Mum asks, looking up from her magazine as I let myself in through the kitchen door. I stare at her blankly.

‘Rick . . . Leah's dad? How's he getting on?'

‘Oh, um . . . fine,' I mumble.

‘Is that all he said?' asks Mum, puzzled.

‘Sort of.'

‘I guess Leah's having to take her little brother over to her Auntie's a lot more often now.'

‘Mmmm.'

Mum shakes her head. ‘All that way on the tube.' She gives a little sigh. ‘Can't be easy for any of them.'

I force a smile then quickly mutter some excuse about finishing off some homework to get away.

‘Homework? Goodness . . . You'll have to spend the day round Leah's more often, 'Mum jokes as I rush off upstairs.

Up in my room, as I lift my black polo-neck jumper over my head to change into a T-shirt, I catch sight of the long
red scar down my chest. As it heals, it's becoming maddeningly itchy and I have to resist the urge to scratch at it. The weather's getting warmer. Spring's coming. I can't wear these high-necked clothes in the summer, I think, but I hate the idea of anyone seeing my scar.

All the time, I'm worrying whether or not I should tell Sam about my transplant. It's obvious that he hasn't got over Callum's death. How on earth will he react if I tell him I have his best friend's heart beating away in my body? I close my eyes and try not to think about it.

I go out of my room onto the landing and turn on the computer. Remembering that Alice said she's never heard about anything similar to my experiences, I nervously check out a couple of websites to do with transplants, but find nothing.

I bring up my page, secretly hoping Leah is online or has sent me a message. Although she's really upset me, we've been friends for so many years and I do miss her. I'm stunned to see that loads of people have deleted themselves as friends. Wounded, I grimly tell myself that I should have realised this would happen and I need to be tougher.

I have just one message. It reads,
Hey check this out
. Impulsively, I click on it, to see a link that says,
Becki Scar-Chest isn't rite in the head
.

For about two minutes, I'm too shocked to do anything apart from stare at the screen in disbelief. Gradually, those few short words sink in.

Instinct is telling me that I'm making a huge mistake and I shouldn't look any more. But it's as if I'm hypnotised by the screen. As I click on the link, my stomach starts to churn. There are so many comments. Most of the nastier ones have been posted by the same person . . . Shannon.

Half a page down and still reading, I hear a noise behind me. Alarmed, I spin round. It's Danny.

‘Want to play my new computer game with me?' he asks.

‘Go away, Danny.'

‘It's really good – it's got giraffes —'

‘No . . . go away!' I explode.

His little face crumples and I suddenly feel mean. None of this is his fault. ‘Sorry, Danny,' I mumble.

‘What's wrong?' he asks.

‘Nothing. I'm fine.'

I wonder if I should tell Mum or someone, but instantly reject the idea. Instead, I close the page and frantically log off.

‘There,' I tell Danny a minute later as I get up and offer him my chair. ‘It's all yours.'

Thankfully, I have my weekly check-up today so I don't have to go anywhere near school. I'm dreading going back now. My visits to the hospital are such a routine that I no longer flinch when they say they're going to take a vat of blood or do a biopsy, which means they take the tiniest piece of my heart out through a microscopic tube to test it. It sounds gross but it doesn't hurt and it's the best way of testing whether your new heart is being rejected by your body.

Maybe it's because I've had these procedures done so many times that they don't bother me any more. Or maybe it's because they help to take my mind off what's happening at school. Unlike there, everyone here at the hospital is pleased to see me, and to my surprise I even see Alice again.

‘What are you doing here?' I ask, when I bump into her in the corridor.

‘Oh, they love me so much, a once a year appointment wasn't enough,' she jokes.

‘So is everything OK?'

‘Course. Except I'm really annoyed – I'm missing my riding lesson.'

‘So why —'

‘They messed up my test results,' she says with a groan. ‘They've said it's probably just a blip but they want to re-run them all.'

‘Oh, bad luck.'

‘Don't worry. I'm out of here in an hour, tops, then straight down the stables. So how's you?'

I force a smile. ‘Great,' I lie.