Forbidden (3 page)

Asleep, Lochan looks like a boy again – ink-stained fingers, creased grey T-shirt, scuffed jeans and bare feet. People say there is a strong family resemblance – I don’t see it. For a start he is the only one of us with bright green eyes, as clear as cut glass. His shaggy hair is tar-black, covering the nape of his neck and reaching his eyes. His arms are stil tanned from summer, and even in the halflight I can make out the faint outline of his biceps. He is beginning to develop an athletic look. He hit puberty late, and for a while even I was taler than he was, something I teased him about mercilessly, caling him ‘my little brother’, back when I thought that kind of thing funny. He took it al on the chin of course, the way he does everything.

But recently things have begun to change. Despite the fact that he is painfuly shy, most of the girls in my year fancy him – filing me with a conflicting mixture of annoyance and pride. Yet he is stil unable to talk to his peers, rarely smiles outside these wals, and always, always wears the same distant, haunted look, a hint of sadness in his eyes. At home, however, when the little ones aren’t being too difficult or when we are joking together and he feels relaxed, he sometimes displays an entirely different side: a love of mischief, a dimple-cheeked grin, a self-deprecating sense of humour. But even during these brief moments, I feel he is hiding a darker, unhappier part of himself – the part that struggles to cope at school, in the outside world; a world where for some reason he has never felt at peace.

A car backfires across the street, jolting me out of my thoughts. Lochan lets out a smal cry and struggles up, disorientated.

‘You fel asleep,’ I inform him with a smile. ‘I think we could market trigonometry as a new treatment for insomnia.’

‘Shit. What time is it?’ He appears panicked for a moment, pushing back the blanket and swinging his feet to the floor, running his fingers through his hair.

‘Just gone nine.’

‘What about—’

‘Tiffin and Wila are fast asleep and Kit’s busy being an angry teenager in his room.’

‘Oh.’ He relaxes slightly, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands and blinking sleepily down at the floor.

‘You look whacked. Perhaps you should forget homework for tonight and go to bed.’

‘No, I’m OK.’ He gestures towards the pile of books on the coffee table. ‘Anyway, gotta finish revising that lot before the test tomorrow.’ He reaches out to switch on the lamp, casting a smal circle of light on the floor.

‘You should have told me you had a test. I’d have done dinner!’

‘Wel, you did everything else.’ There is an awkward pause. ‘Thanks for – for sorting them out.’

‘No problem.’ I yawn, shifting sideways in the armchair to hang my legs over the armrest, and comb the hair away from my face. ‘Perhaps from now on we should just leave Kit’s meal on a tray at the bottom of the ladder. We can cal it room service. Then we might al get a bit of peace.’

The hint of a smile touches his lips, but then he turns away to stare out of the blank window and silence descends.

I take a sharp breath. ‘He was being a little shit tonight, Loch. That stuff about school . . .’

He seems to freeze. I can almost see the muscles tighten beneath his T-shirt as he sits sideways on the couch, an arm slung over the back, one foot on the ground, the other tucked beneath him. ‘I’d better finish this . . .’

I recognize my cue. I want to say something to him, something along the lines of: It’s all an act. Everyone else is pretending anyway. Kit may have surrounded himself with a group of kids who spit in the face of authority, but they’re just as scared as everyone else. They make fun of others and pick on loners just so they can belong. And I’m not much better. I might appear confident and chatty, but I spend most of my time laughing at jokes I don’t find funny, saying things I don’t really mean – because at the end of the day that’s what we’re all trying to do: fit in, one way or another, desperately trying to pretend we’re all the same.

‘Goodnight then. Don’t work too late.’

‘Night, Maya.’ He smiles suddenly, dimples forming at the corners of his mouth. But when I pause in the doorway, looking back at him, he is flicking through a textbook, his teeth chafing at the permanent, painfuly red sore beneath his bottom lip.

You think no one else understands, I want to tel him, but you’re wrong. I do. You’re not alone.

Our mother looks raddled in the harsh grey morning light. She nurses a mug of coffee in one hand, a cigarette in the other. Her bleached hair is a tangled mess, and smudged eyeliner has leaked into black halfmoons beneath her bloodshot eyes. Her pink silk robe is knotted over a skimpy nightdress – her disheveled appearance a clear sign that Dave did not stay over last night. In fact I don’t even remember hearing them come in. On the rare occasions they come back to this house, there is the bang of the front door, muffled laughter, keys being dropped on the doorstep, loud shushes and more thuds, folowed by cackling laughter as he attempts to give her a piggyback up the stairs. The others have learned to sleep through it, but I have always been a light sleeper and their slurred voices force me to acknowledge consciousness, even as I press my eyelids closed and try to ignore the grunts and squeals and the rhythmic squeak of bedsprings from the main bedroom.

Tuesday is Mum’s day off, which means that for once she gets to sort out breakfast and take the little ones to school. But it’s already quarter to eight, Kit has yet to appear, Tiffin is eating breakfast in his underwear and Wila has no clean socks and is bemoaning the fact to anyone who wil listen. I fetch Tiffin’s uniform and force him to get dressed at the table since Mum seems unable to do much more than sip coffee and chain-smoke at the window. Maya goes off in search of Wila’s socks and I hear her pound on Kit’s door and yel something about the consequences of getting another late slip. Mum finishes her last cigarette and comes to sit with us at the table, talking about plans for the weekend that I know wil never materialize. Both Wila and Tiffin start chatting away at once, delighted by the attention, their breakfast forgotten, and I feel my muscles tense.

‘You’ve gotta be out of the house in five minutes and that breakfast needs to be eaten before then.

’

Mum catches me by the wrist as I pass. ‘Lochie-Loch, sit down for a moment. I never get a chance to talk to you. We never sit down like this – as a family.’

With a monumental effort I swalow my frustration. ‘Mum, we’ve got to be at school in fifteen minutes and I have a maths test first thing.’

‘Oh, so serious!’ She puls me down into the chair beside her and cups my chin in her hand.

‘Look at you, so pale and stressy – always studying. When I was your age I was the most beautiful girl at school – all the guys wanted to go out with me. I used to cut class and spend al day in the park with one of my boyfriends!’ She winks conspiratorialy at Tiffin and Wila, who both burst into paroxysms of giggles.

‘Did you kiss your boyfriend on the mouth?’ Tiffin enquires with an evil snicker.

‘Oh yes, and not just on the mouth.’ She winks at me, running her fingers through her tangled hair with a girlish smile.

‘Yuck!’ Wila swings her legs violently under the table, throwing back her head in disgust.

‘Did you lick his tongue,’ Tiffin persists, ‘like they do on TV?’

‘Tiffin!’ I snap. ‘Stop being disgusting and finish your breakfast.’

Tiffin reluctantly picks up his spoon, but his face breaks into a grin as Mum quickly nods her head at him with a mischievous smile.

‘Aargh, that’s gross!’ He starts making gagging noises just as Maya comes in, trying to coax Kit through the doorway.

‘What’s gross?’ she enquires as Kit slinks grumpily into his chair and drops his head to the table with a thud.

‘You don’t want to know,’ I begin quickly, but Tiffin fils her in anyway. Maya puls a face. ‘Mum!’

‘Yeah, wel, that little story realy kick-started my appetite,’ Kit snaps irritably.

‘You’ve got to eat something,’ Maya insists. ‘You’re stil growing.’

‘No he’s not, he’s shrinking!’ Tiffin guffaws.

‘Shut up, you little shit.’

‘Loch! Kit caled me a little shit!’

‘Sit down, Maya,’ Mum says with a gooey smile. ‘Ah, look at al of you, so smart in your uniforms. And here we are having breakfast al together as a family!’

Maya gives her a tight smile as she butters toast and places it on Kit’s plate. I feel my pulse begin to rise. I can’t leave until they’re al ready or there’s a good chance that Kit wil cut school again and Mum wil keep Tiffin and Wila at home until mid-morning. And I can’t be late. Not because of the test

. . . because I can’t be the last one to walk into the classroom.

‘We’ve got to go,’ I inform Maya, who is stil trying to persuade breakfast into Kit as he remains slumped with his head on his arms.

‘Oh, why are my bunnies in such a rush this morning!’ Mum exclaims. ‘Maya, wil you get your brother to relax? Look at him . . .’ She rubs my shoulder, her hand like a burn through the fabric of my shirt. ‘So tense.’

‘Loch’s got a test and we realy are going to be late if we don’t make a move,’ Maya informs her gently.

Mum stil has her other hand clenched tightly round my wrist, preventing me from getting up to grab my usual cup of coffee. ‘You’re not honestly nervous about a stupid test, are you, Loch?

Because there are far more important things in life, you know. The last thing you want to do is turn into a nerd like your father, nose always buried in a book, living like a tramp just to get one of those useless PhD thingies. And look where his posh Cambridge education got him – a flipping poet, for chrissakes! He’d have earned more money sweeping the streets!’ She gives a derisive snort. Raising his head suddenly, Kit asks sneeringly, ‘When’s Lochan ever failed a test? He’s just afraid of coming in late and—’

Maya threatens to stuff the toast down his throat. I disengage myself from Mum’s clasp and rattle through the front room, colecting blazer, walet, keys, bag. I bump into Maya in the halway and she tels me to go ahead, she’l make sure Mum leaves on time with the little ones and Kit gets to school. I squeeze her arm in thanks and then I’m off, running down the empty street. I reach school with seconds to spare. The huge concrete building rises up before me, spreading its tentacles outwards, sucking in the other ugly, smaler blocks with barren walkways and endless tunnels. I make it to the maths room just before the teacher shuffles in and starts handing out the papers. After my half-mile sprint I can hardly see – red blotches pulsate before my eyes. Mr Morris stops by my desk and my breath catches in my throat.

‘Are you al right, Lochan? You look as if you’ve just run a marathon.’

I nod quickly and take the paper from him without looking up.

The test begins and silence descends. I love tests. I have always loved tests, exams of any kind. As long as they are written. As long as they take up the whole lesson. As long as I don’t have to speak or look up from my paper until the bel goes.

I don’t know when it started – this thing – but it’s growing, muffling me, suffocating me like poison ivy. I grew into it. It grew into me. We blurred at the edges, became an amorphous, seeping, crawling thing. Sometimes I manage to distract myself, trick myself out of dweling on it, convince myself that I’m OK. At home, for instance, with my family, I can be myself, be normal again. Until last night. Until the inevitable happened; until news finaly filtered down the Belmont grapevine that Lochan Whitely was a socialy inept weirdo. Even though Kit and I never realy got along, the realization that he is ashamed of me takes hold: a horrible, clutching, sinking feeling in my chest. Just thinking about it makes the floor tilt beneath my chair. I feel as if I am on a slippery slope and al I can do is plummet downwards. I know al about being ashamed of a family member – the number of times I’ve wished my mother would act her age in public, if not in private. It’s horrible, being ashamed of someone you care about; it eats away at you. And if you let it get to you, if you give up the fight and surrender, eventualy that shame turns to hate.

I don’t want Kit to be ashamed of me. I don’t want him to hate me, even if I feel like I hate him sometimes. But that little messed-up kid ful of anger and resentment is stil my brother; he’s stil family. Family: the most important thing of al. My siblings may drive me crazy at times but they are my blood. They’re al I’ve known. My family is me. They are my life. Without them I walk the planet alone. The rest are al outsiders, strangers. They never metamorphose into friends. And even if they did, even if I found, by some miracle, a way of connecting to someone outside my family – how could they possibly compare to those who speak my language and know who I am without having to be told? Even if I were able to meet their eyes, even if I were able to speak without the words cluttering up my throat, unable to surface, even if their gaze didn’t burn holes in my skin and make me want to run a milion miles, how would I ever be able to care about them the way I care about my brothers and sisters?

The bel goes and I am one of the first out of my seat. As I pass the rows and rows of pupils, they al seem to look up at me. I see myself configured in their eyes: the guy who always buries himself at the very back of every class, who never speaks, always sits alone in one of the outdoor stairwels during break, hunched over a book. The guy who doesn’t know how to talk to people, who shakes his head when picked on in class, who is absent whenever there is some kind of presentation to do. Over the years they have learned just to let me be. When I first arrived here, there was plenty of ribbing, plenty of pushing around, but eventualy they grew bored. Occasionaly a new pupil has tried to strike up a conversation. And I’ve tried, I realy have. But when you can only come up with one-word answers, when your voice fails you altogether, what more can you do? What more can they? The girls are the worst, especialy these days. They try harder, are more tenacious. Some even ask me why I never speak – as if I can answer that. They flirt, try and get me to smile. They mean wel, but what they don’t understand is that their mere presence makes me want to die. But today, mercifuly, I am left alone. I speak to no one for the whole morning. I catch sight of Maya across the lunch hal, and she glances at the usual girl gabbing away at her side and then rols her eyes. I smile. As I fork my way through mouthfuls of watery shepherd’s pie, I watch her pretend to listen to her friend, Francie, but she keeps glancing over at me, puling faces to crack me up. Her white school shirt, several sizes too big, hangs over her grey skirt, several inches too short. She is wearing her white PE lace-ups because she has misplaced her school shoes. She is without socks, and a large plaster, surrounded by a multitude of bruises, covers a scraped knee. Her auburn hair reaches her waist, long and straight like Wila’s. Freckles smatter her cheekbones, accentuating the natural palor of her skin. Even when she is serious, her deep blue eyes always hold a glimmer that suggests she is about to smile. Over the last year she has turned from pretty to beautiful in an unusual, delicate, unnerving way. Boys chat her up endlessly – alarmingly.

After lunch I take my class copy of Romeo and Juliet, which I actualy read years ago, and ensconce myself on the fourth step down of the north stairwel outside the science block, the one least frequently used. This is how my wasted hours accumulate, much like my loneliness. I keep my book open in case anyone approaches, but I’m not realy in the mood to read it again. Instead, from my concrete post, I watch a plane trace a white slash across the deep blue of the sky. I look at the tiny aircraft, shrunk down by distance, and marvel at the vast expanse between al those people on that huge crowded plane, and me.