Louder Than Words (20 page)

Dillon’s face split into a wide grin. ‘Me neither,’ he said. He reached out and shook my hand. ‘Welcome to ActionX, brother.’

By my side, Lara looked up at me with a soft, sleepy smile that made my insides molten.

Dillon nodded seriously. ‘I want to find another way. That’s what I’ve been working on. No violence. But hit right where it gets only the people at the top, the ones who deserve it. Absolutely no collateral damage and no bloodshed.’ He pinned me with that intense gaze he’d used on his audience from the podium. ‘You interested in that?’

I grinned. ‘Oh yeah! I’m interested in
that
.’

. . . And that’s it, Dad. All of it. I know you’ll never get this email, but I’d like you to understand why I did it. It is about Lara of course. But it’s more. I felt something out there. Something that matters. The world won’t ever change if we all sit safe inside our own houses and don’t try, will it? I hope you’d be proud of me for trying.

Love, Silas

CHAPTER 36

Even though Silas closed the front door extra quietly, it woke me up. I glanced at the alarm clock. It was four in the morning. I got up and padded out with bare feet on to the landing. Silas was walking up the stairs as if every bone and muscle hurt. He had deep dark circles under his eyes that I could see even in the moonlight shining in from the window.

I grabbed his arm. Where have you been?

He shook his head at me. ‘Not now, Rafi. Too tired.’ He opened the door of his bedroom. ‘I need to sleep.’

I sniffed. He smelt funny. I couldn’t put my finger on it for a second.

He went inside the bedroom and closed the door.

As I climbed slowly back into bed, I realised what the smell was. It was smoke.

In the morning, I texted Josie. It was time. I didn’t know why now, I just knew it was.

She texted back a few minutes later.

It was easier to do this away from my family. Too much of it was about them for me to feel comfortable exposing this to view in my own house.

I walked round to Josie’s. It was still sunny even though the afternoon was almost over. I could smell the smoke from a barbecue wafting through from a back garden and with it the scent of something spicy cooking . . . Mmm, chilli and lime maybe. As I got closer to Josie’s house I discovered the cooking smell was coming from her place. I headed round the back to find her dad standing over the barbecue with a bottle of beer in his hand. Josie was flopped in a garden chair, one leg dangling over the arm.

‘Rafi,’ he said in that rich, deep, safe voice, ‘yeah! Good you came over. Food’s nearly ready and I cooked too much again.’

Josie laughed. ‘Dad always gets carried away with a barbecue and cooks too much. We end up eating leftovers the next day every single time.’

I sniffed the air. Was that coconut with the lime? He had some chicken skewers on the barbecue. I could see from the colour they’d been marinated in something. Whatever it was it smelt delicious and my mouth was watering.

Josie’s dad tapped the side of his nose when he saw me sniffing. ‘Old Caribbean recipe,’ he said. ‘My mother taught it to me.’

Josie nodded. ‘Grandma cooks like a dream. Whenever she comes to stay I end up putting a ton of weight on.’ She patted the chair beside her. Come and sit down.’ As I did, she whispered, ‘We’ll go up to the gazebo after this and you can show me whatever it is.’ She pointed up the garden to a large painted gazebo carefully positioned to catch the last of the evening sun.

Her dad motioned to her to pass him a plate and he put one of the chicken skewers on it for me. ‘You try that and see what you think. But watch it – it’ll be hot.’ He chuckled and I guessed he meant more than it had just come off the barbecue.

I blew on the skewer vigorously as Josie helped her dad serve the food on to three plates. There was a table and chairs further up the garden, but nobody could be bothered to walk up there so we lounged on our chairs with cold drinks by our feet. I bit into the chicken and an explosion of flavours hit my tongue and I gasped. It was so rare for me to make any kind of noise that Josie jumped. Her dad clapped his hands together and punched the air. I grinned. He was right, it was fantastic. Lime and coconut and a massive chilli kick that was just the right side of mouth-burning. The chicken was juicy and tender and almost melted off the skewer on to my tongue. It was too good to wolf down, but far too good to nibble. I compromised by eating it in large bites with my eyes shut to savour the flavour while Josie’s dad laughed at my face.

‘Have another,’ he said, topping my plate up. ‘Josie doesn’t bring so many friends round these days so I’ve lost my appreciative audience!’

Had he asked why, I wondered, and how had she got out of that one? In a normal family if friends stopped coming round, a parent noticed things like that. It was only in the weird world of the Ramseys that they didn’t.

Josie’s dad sat with us and chatted in a way I wasn’t used to. I suppose it was regular, normal stuff like what exams were coming up at school and was Josie still struggling with her A-level choices for next year or had she made her mind up. Was there anything particular we wanted to do over the long summer break? And then he was thinking of renting a holiday cottage in the Lakes for a week or so and would I like to come along?

‘Oh, say yes, Rafi. It’ll be fun,’ Josie pleaded and I nodded without thinking it through because I felt so relaxed around these two. It was as if it didn’t matter whether I spoke or not. It was OK either way.

There was no danger of Mum taking me and Silas on holiday. She might book an artists’ retreat for herself for a few days, but family holidays were another thing we didn’t do. I’m not sure it had ever occurred to her to take us on one. I couldn’t remember if we had ever been when Dad was there – though Silas might know.

Josie’s dad said we didn’t have to help clear up when we’d eaten; he was just going to throw everything in the dishwasher anyway so to go off and do our own thing. Josie poured us a couple more glasses of juice and we headed to the gazebo. I felt a flutter of butterflies in my stomach as it got closer to the time when I’d have to hand my story over.

I took a gulp of juice and held the notebook up.

‘Is this what I think it is?’ Josie asked and her mouth hung open in shock.

Nod.

‘Oh. My. God. Hang on, let me get comfortable.’ She shifted about on the wooden bench so her feet were up and her back was leaning against the plank wall.

There was no need. It wasn’t a very long story. She’d be disappointed. I was sure she was hoping for something more than my pathetic little paragraphs. It wasn’t even a story. Just rambling, repeating myself, trying to find words for why there were no words. Trying to make sense of the senseless.

I handed her the notebook and leaned my head against the wall to let the nausea and panic wash through me as she read. If I tried hard enough I might get them to not only wash through me but right out of me again.

I didn’t watch Josie as she read. I closed my eyes and saw my words swim in front of my face.

Once upon not very long ago in a place not very far away, there lived a girl who just wanted everything to be nice. She hated rows and raised voices. She hated feeling stupid. And most of all she hated not being as special as the rest of her family.

When she went to school, the other children there were more normal than her family was but she still felt like a boring oddball because she couldn’t join in with their games. She didn’t understand them and she didn’t know how to talk to the other children. At home, everybody talked about terribly important things, things she didn’t understand much about. They used big words and she struggled to follow what they were saying and no one had time to explain it to her. When she did try to join in, it seemed as if they were impatient for her to finish so they could get back to talking properly in their clever way.

But the children at school weren’t like that at all. They said strange things like ‘You stink!’ to each other, which all of them seemed to find massively funny and she couldn’t see why it was funny at all because a) they didn’t stink and b) if they did, that wouldn’t be funny, would it? So the other children would give her strange looks when she didn’t laugh and she didn’t think they liked to play with her much.

The teachers scared her. They would ask her questions and look very hard at her when she was supposed to give an answer. And when that happened all the other children in the class looked at her too. She realised she didn’t like being looked at so much.

As she got a little bit older, she saw more and more how special her brothers and sisters were and how different she was. They were all so talented in different ways and so intelligent. They didn’t have any trouble understanding the complicated things that were talked about around the dinner table. Even the brother nearest to her in age could keep up with ease whereas she struggled to know what to say at all. And again, when she joined in, it wasn’t as good as the things they said and they often didn’t listen to her the way they listened to each other. From this she knew that she wasn’t very good at talking.

Gradually she stopped trying. Also, if she didn’t talk, she realised she got told off less because people didn’t notice her so much. It was a little bit like being a ghost. At the dinner table she practised being very, very quiet and it worked – nobody noticed she was there. Except the brother closest to her in age, but she learned that if she pulled funny faces at him when nobody was looking, he laughed, but he didn’t expect her to speak either.

She decided life was easier when nobody noticed her.

One day, when she was trying to answer a question her mother asked her about what she wanted for lunch, and she very badly wanted tomato soup, she realised that even though Mummy asked her what she wanted, she wasn’t listening at all to her answer. She began to stammer ‘T-t-t-tom–’ but the words wouldn’t come out and Mummy didn’t care. She felt her throat lock up as she understood that what she said didn’t matter to Mummy. After that, whenever she tried to talk to Mummy the same thing happened – her throat got so tight she couldn’t speak.

But Mummy didn’t even notice.

When she sat at the table with her family and they all talked about their interesting and important things, she came to understand that she wasn’t interesting or important at all. Not like them. And when she realised that, it got even harder to talk to them until, one by one, the choking thing in her throat happened when she tried to speak to any of them.

Once she stopped talking at home, except to the brother closest to her in age to whom she still managed to whisper, it became harder to talk in school and then she found she couldn’t speak to anyone there either. They did look at her in school when she spoke, but in a scary way and that was very hard to bear. At home no one listened, but at school they paid too much attention. She knew how useless she was because she couldn’t bear either.

And it got worse and worse. The more people realised she didn’t speak and tried to make her, the more attention was on her. Even Mummy paid attention now, but Mummy’s attention was the scariest of all because it was angry. She could see how frustrated Mummy was with her all the time. Mummy must be sorry she was ever born – that’s how it felt.

And then one day she couldn’t talk at all. Even to Silas.

‘Rafi,’ Josie said with a wobble in her voice.

I looked up.

‘It’s not true, you know. I understand how it must have seemed that way, but you’re every bit as special a person as any of them. You’ve got to try to get over this. You can’t spend your life feeling this way. It’s not right. Does anyone else know?’

I shook my head.

‘You need to show your therapist.’

Vigorous head-shake.

‘No because you’ve written it or no because of what it says?’

I shrugged. Both probably.

‘What if I came with you next time and told her why it started. Then you wouldn’t have to let her read it.’

That was a possibility, but . . .

I shook my head again.

‘Don’t you want Silas to know?’ And she looked like she understood exactly why I didn’t want Silas to know. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? Then don’t take him to that session. Take me instead. I’ll talk to him about it if you want.’

If she could get him to let me go with her . . . and if she could get him to let Mum let me go with her . . .

Could Andrea help me if she knew the truth? Did I have the courage to let her know?

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.

(Abraham Lincoln)

CHAPTER 37

Dear Dad,

It’s OK. Everything’s fine.

Today we went over to Dillon’s HQ. They were planning something big. Everyone said Dillon had been very secretive about it until now, but he’d invited a bunch of them around for the big reveal. From how excited Lara was, it didn’t look like she got asked into ActionX’s inner circle that much and this was a really big deal for her, so I couldn’t say no. Even when what I really wanted was to just hang out, just her and me. Isolation from the world, like we were the only two people on the planet and had forever to get to know each other.

Everyone had congregated in the room they’d used for the sleepover last time. It was still empty, but there were cushions thrown on the floor to sit on. Lara sat close and leaned into me again. She didn’t speak much to the others. Just quiet hellos. Was she intimidated by them? I found that hard to believe, but if she really did want in to their leadership clique then perhaps she was overawed by what they did. Certainly she did seem impressed by Katrin and her uber-planning on the night of the riot.