My Brother's Shadow (5 page)

After the school trip, my angel brother came
down again.

He sat on the end of my bed. He hadn't sat before, just sort of hovered. I could see the wounds, thick streaks of red across his wrists, still glistening, wet, sticky. They made me think of jewels; rubies set in golden skin. I wondered how much a ruby that size would be worth.

He looked where I was looking and pulled his sleeves down to cover the terrible chasms.

“Hey, Tiny,” he said.

I said “Hey” back.

Bright eyes glowed out from under a flat-brimmed cap. Moses cast them around the room, then fixed them back on me. “You're growing,” he said.

I didn't feel like it. I hadn't had new shoes or trousers in ages, not since the last time I'd seen him in the waking world. I told him so.

“No,” he said, pressing his hand against his chest. “In here, you're growing.”

I placed my own hand on my own chest. Inside, my heart beat and fluttered. We sat still a long time. I felt in the darkness the pulsing warmth of my body.

“I'm growing?”

“You're growing. And it's good. You've got to grow,” the angel Moses said.

Mr. Wills has been teaching us about similes and metaphors, when you compare something to something else that it's like.

Here's a famous simile by William Wordsworth:

It's good, isn't it? The cloud, lonely, wandering, high, away from everything.

When Mr. Wills told us about it I was staring out the window, inspecting the clouds, making it make sense.

“You've got to pay attention, Kaia!” he shouted at me. “This is important, you've got to focus.”

I know
, I thought.
And I was
. But I didn't say anything; I just stared back at the board as if that rectangle of white were where you could learn everything under the sun.

Poppy and the clever table got to write simile poems about animals, describing the way they look, act, feel.

We had a “fill in the blanks” worksheet. Stupid stuff like:

I hate doing stupid work. Mr. Wills shouted at me again; he was in a bad mood. “You're just not trying.”

He was right. I wasn't.

My favorite one we looked at is by Valerie Bloom, which is the most wonderful name. This one's a metaphor:

I talked to Harry that afternoon, in the hall, outside of class. Harry was trying to watch the boy,
who was circling the large room, swooping like a bird, but I wanted to talk to him.

We wrote a poem together, me and Harry. I did the talking. Harry did the writing. He let me take it and copy it out in my notebook.

Mum was sick, really sick
.

I was awakened by a crash. My eyes opened. The darkness was complete except for a narrow slit in the curtains.

From behind my door I heard a soft groan. I stayed as still as possible and listened. And listened. Another groan.

I pushed my duvet to one side; I knew that voice, my mother's.

It was just as dark in the hallway, but now that my eyes had adjusted, outlined objects became clear. My mum lay sprawled across the floor. A bottle, the neck smashed, rested just out of reach of her hand. A pool of sadness circled both my
mother and the bottle; its stale tang attacked the back of my throat.

“Mum,” I whispered.

The body groaned again.

I crouched, carefully avoiding the vomit.

“Mum,” I whispered again, closer this time.

She turned her head and peered up at me through her waterfall of hair, matted with muck. She pushed herself up to her knees. I put my arms under her armpits—no avoiding the sick now—and heaved her into a sitting position against the wall.

She mumbled wordlessly, then breathed out, “Water.”

I fetched her water. I made her drink. After she'd sat awhile, I led her into the bathroom. I gently undressed her and washed her down, then led her to her bed.

She spoke once more before sleep overcame her.

“My Kaia,” she said, “it's just me and you now.”

I stood above her, looking down at the wreck
that had been my mum. I stood a long time in the dark.

At last I spoke. “It's just me, Mum, not me and you. You're not here. You're even more frozen than I am.”

I don't know where it all came from, probably the same place where I'd buried my pain, somewhere between my heart and my stomach, but it kept on coming.

“Things have got to change, Mum. We've got to change and grow and … and … live.”

I turned. I left my snoring mum. I cleaned up her mess.

When I finally clambered into my bed, I found that tears covered my face and I knew that I had to say those words to my mum again, next time when she was awake.

I awoke to the smell of pancakes and my mother's guilt wafting under the door. I followed that smell. I love pancakes.

“Morning, darling,” my mum said, her eyes still bleary but a smile hiding her shame.

I didn't smile back.

“I've made pancakes,” my mum continued.

I still didn't smile.

She stopped smiling and sat down next to me.

“I'm sorry, Kai.”

I rolled my eyes back and glanced at the short stack of pancakes. I love pancakes.

“I'm sorry, sweetheart.”

I picked at the tablecloth. I flicked a few bread crumbs onto the floor.

“Come on, darling, talk to me.”

I looked at my mum.

I didn't speak.

Timing is everything. Spring buds appear, new growth, ready for the approaching summer sun. Chicks are born, high in their lofty homes, and squirrels leave their winter beds once the last frost has departed.

Timing is everything. The day before, Mr.
Wills had handed out a
really special
letter. The first people to reply would do bike training: a whole week out of class, cycling.

Timing is everything, and I had a chance this day.

I spoke.

“OK, Mum,” I said with the slightest hint of a smile.

“OK?”

“OK.”

“Pancakes?”

“Pancakes,” I replied with a nod. “Mum, I've got a letter needs signing.”

“Of course, of course,” she said, piling warm pancakes onto my plate, then glugging syrup all over them.

I love pancakes.

“Have you got a bike?” Mr. Wills asked
.

I had rushed into school before the other kids arrived, stuffed with pancakes. Mr. Wills was in the classroom, staring at his computer screen.

“Yes,” I said. I did have a bike. Mum had bought it over a year ago, before it happened, for my birthday. Moses had bought me a big, heavy book,
Trees of Britain: An Illustrated Guide
. I loved both presents.

The bike wasn't new, but that didn't matter. Moses had painted it, pink like cherry blossoms, fixed up the broken parts, greased it, made it run. “Better than new,” he said. “Special, just like you, Tiny.”

I know I smiled then.

“OK,” Mr. Wills went on. “Well, I'd better just check with Harry.” I stared away from him. “You know he likes to work with you sometimes.”

When I “worked” with Harry we made pictures, or folded paper into all sorts of shapes like birds and flowers, or wrote poems, and he asked me questions, lots of questions. I told him I was fine.

Mr. Wills said I should go back outside. I didn't. I went to the library.

I can hear the bell ringing outside as I write this. Time for school to start.

At lunch, while the boy snarls at passing children, I have a daydream.

I'm sitting on my favorite bench, Moses to my left, the boy to my right. We watch as the school starts to crumble away like a sand castle in the wind.

It starts with a deep whine, a primal squeal;
the hyenas stop their laughing and chatting and pointless ball games and stare up at the red building. The screech turns to a sigh, as if the walls have finally, exhaustedly given up. Then pieces of brick, chunks large and chunks small, trickle and tumble down the walls along with gritty white mortar. Next come the roof tiles: discolored, coated with furry green moss, they fall, landing with a shattering smash. Panes of glass along with rotted wooden frames fall forwards, disappearing in the pile of debris.

I catch sight of Mr. Wills, still inside his classroom, deep in conversation with Harry. He's shaking his head. “No, Kaia can't do cycling.” Papers, tests, books, plastic calculators come streaming out of the gaping holes where windows once were.

Around me, the kids, frozen amidst the chaos, begin to turn to dust one by one. I see Poppy go, Dev, Hanaiya, Shadid. I add Luzie to the bench, next to the boy.

Finally, with a second wail, despair in its voice,
the building falls in on itself. A great cloud of dust rises into the air. We shield our eyes.

When it settles we're all that's left: us and the tree against our backs.

I laugh, not at the destruction, at the freedom.

Today, the day of the pancakes and handing in
the all-important letter, Harry asked Mr. Wills if some pupils could come out and help with a “special” project.

“Who would like to go and work with Harry?” Mr. Wills asked.

A funny thing in my class—maybe it's the same in all classes—but whatever the task, no matter how dull, if a teacher offers a job, most of us would bite his hand off to do it.

So my finger was not the only one pointing to the heavens, but it was certainly the first.

“Go on then, Kaia,” my teacher said. “And … and …” He
glanced from eager face to eager face. “And Shadid.”

I leapt to my feet, almost like the boy would have, and saw Shadid, an ex-friend, smiling across the room. We headed for the door, where gray eyes in the boy's wild face waited to greet us.

The “special” project, it turned out, was more fun than I could have guessed. Harry wasn't just a man who worked with wild boys and sometimes-frozen girls like me. When school ended, Harry was an artist, a graffiti artist. I know, that's almost too cool, isn't it?

The head teacher asked Harry, with the help of some pupils—the boy, me and Shadid—to paint a small wall in the playground. I told you, far more fun than I could have guessed.

We started by thinking of ideas. What did school mean to us?

Harry asked if he could change that last one to learning too. Shadid wasn't so sure.

Harry wanted us to draw some images that showed what we meant so he could take them away and design the wall based on our pictures. He rolled out a long sheet of paper like wallpaper—maybe it
was
wallpaper—and we drew all over it.

Shadid, obviously, drew footballs and footballers, standing and running and kicking. Harry drew a big brain with things like sums and words and paintbrushes going into it, and things like money and people doing jobs and medals coming out of it. The boy, with a little help from me, drew trains and trees and children sitting.

I thought for a while, after I'd got the boy started. Harry let me think as long as I needed. I needed a long time. I wished Mr. Wills would just let me think sometimes. Then I drew a building falling down, collapsing, bricks everywhere. I drew children turning into birds, free. I drew bird-children flying high in the sky. I drew wild birds swooping and gliding. I drew baby birds being
sheltered under a bigger bird's wing. I drew and drew and drew.

When we finished and the wallpaper was covered with our scribbling, we walked round it, looking down at all the pictures.