Jack Tumor (14 page)

And then it was all over. Barry opened the door and said, “That's it, fine.”

I felt a surge of elation.

Fine.

He said I was fine.

There was nothing in my head. No cancer, no brain tumor. Just a voice. I was mad, not dying, yippee!

And then—maybe because he realized what I was thinking— Barry said, “Nice clear scan. We'll send these up to Dr. Jones. He'll, ah, let you know. About what . . . I mean, he'll be in touch.”

It took a couple of seconds for that to sink in, and then I understood. No, of course this computer geek couldn't just tell me I was in the clear. All he meant was that the scans were okay, not that my brain was.

“Can I go then?”

“Oh, ah, yes. Put your clothes on, though.”

I think he was trying to be helpful.

I
was out of there by midday. No one came to see me off, no one came to meet me. All a bit anticlimactic, really. Jack commented, of course.

LIKE I ALWAYS SAID, IT'S JUST YOU AND ME, BUDDY
.

You never said that.

I'M SAYING IT NOW
.

I thought about going to see Mum at the charity shop, but I wasn't sure if I could take the smell—you know, the tang of old clothes and lost hope and stale piss, and somehow the way they try to cover it up with air freshener just makes it worse. So that left roaming the streets, or school, or home. I still didn't feel quite myself after the collapse of the day before, so I got the bus home and went to bed with my clothes on. Even Jack seemed tired, and we both fell asleep in the time it takes to think about the bits of Uma Upshaw between her hair and her chin, which is as far as I got, missing out on the good stuff. I think Mum came in later, and I remember the feel of her lips on my cheek, and
when I woke up the next morning I was in my T-shirt and underpants, which must have been her doing, and I was very glad she stopped there, rather than trying to go full pajamas.

She brought me breakfast in bed. Toast and proper tea, meaning not ginseng-and-buttercup flavor.

“No school for you today,” she said.

I could feel the effort she was making to be normal. It was like watching a drunk person try to walk in a straight line.

“What day is it?”

“Friday.”

I was going to object. I like Fridays. Double math. But I felt Jack's presence, felt that he wanted me to keep quiet. To stay put.

We had a little chat about the scan—me and Mum, not me and Jack. I reassured her that I didn't feel too bad, and when she offered to come back to give me lunch I told her not to be silly. Yes, she was acting pretty normal, but it was still a relief when she left for work. Jack felt it too.

I THOUGHT THAT WAS NEVER GOING TO END. AND NOW IT'S TIME TO GO SHOPPING
.

But, but . . .

BUT ME NO BUTS. WE'RE GOING TO GET YOU PROPERLY ATTIRED IN GOOD GREEN BUCKRAM
.

In what?

A FIGURE OF SPEECH
.

You know, Jack, I don't understand you.

HEY, I'M A COMPLEX GUY
.

But I should. I mean, if you only know what I know, even if I've forgotten what I know and you can remember it, then it should be familiar when you say it. But some of the time you could be speaking Greek.

I AM ALPHA AND OMEGA
.

Yeah, funny, even I know that much Greek. First and last letter of the Greek alphabet. And also God, which is a bit big-headed of you, when you think about it.

OH, I DIDN'T MEAN TO PLAY LUCIFER AND UNSEAT JEHOVAH. ALPHA AND OMEGA, BEGINNING AND END. DID I MEAN THAT I WAS HERE BEFORE YOU? I THINK THAT I MAY. DID I MEAN THAT I WOULD BE HERE AFTER YOU? WE ALL KNOW THE PAST, BUT THE FUTURE IS A PLACE OF SHADOW. WE GO THROUGH LIFE FACING BACKWARDS, OUR EYES ON OUR MEMORIES, OUR NOW AN INSTANT. HOW FINE MUST YOU SLICE TIME TO FIND THE PRESENT MOMENT? ALPHA AND OMEGA. STRANGE THAT THEY SHOULD CHOOSE TO TRANSLATE THE HEBREW THUS. EMETH. TRUTH. MADE FROM THREE LETTERS: ALEPH, MEM, AND THAW. ALEPH AND THAW ARE THE FIRST AND LAST LETTERS IN THE HEBREW ALPHABET. SO TRUTH IS THE FIRST AND LAST. A PLEASING COINCIDENCE, OR A MYSTICAL SIGN? WHO CAN SAY
?

That's exactly what I mean! I don't know that. I don't know Hebrew.

I'M SORRY, I WAS SHOWING OFF. C'MON, LET'S SHOP
.

I still don't feel great. In fact your Hebrew's made me feel worse.

OKAY, LET'S HAVE A LITTLE LOOK FROM IN HERE
.

Weird feeling of rummaging again.

DA-DA-DUM-DEE-DAA-DAA-DUM
.

Please don't hum while you're in my brain. It's very irritating.

YOU'RE THE BOSS
.

He didn't sound like he meant it. For some reason that
unnerved me, as if he'd stopped caring much what I thought, but still felt he had to go through the motions.

ANYWAY, NO, LOOKS FINE BACK HERE TO ME. JUST NEED SOME FRESH AIR. AND TIME FLIES. THERE'S A LOT TO DO
.

I didn't have the strength to argue. We got the bus into town. Jack was in a good mood, obviously happy to be out and about.

SO, WE'VE GOT TO PLAN THIS LIKE A MILITARY CAMPAIGN
.

What, shopping?

NOT JUST THE SHOPPING. STYLING YOU UP IS JUST THE OPENING MOVE. THEN WE MAKE OUR PLAY FOR UMA UPSHAW. WE GOT TO GET OURSELVES SOME OF THEM JEANS
.

Levi's?

YOU ARE TRYING TO BE FUNNY, AREN'T YOU? NO, G-E-N-E-S
.

Oh. And what am I going to do with her genes? And what about Smurf? I've only got three friends in the world, and he's one of them, and he's really into her, and he'd never forgive me if . . .

But then I felt myself trail off, the way you do when you know your words are empty. Jack was doing things to me. Some of the things were dramatic, and some were subtle, and one of these subtle things was happening now, and it took the form of not really caring about what other people thought or felt if it got in the way of what I wanted, or what Jack wanted. I knew that this was a bad thing and I tried to fight it, but it was strong as well as subtle.

WE'VE BEEN THERE
, said Jack,
AND YOU KNOW THE TRUTH OF THIS, AND WHAT MUST BE DONE
, and then he looked at me. Of course, Jack didn't really have what it takes to look—you know, eyes, etc.—but I still got the feeling he was giving me one. A look, I mean. A hard one.

After a while of the looking thing, he said,
HOW MUCH WE GOT
?

I took out my wallet. Well, it was a bit more like a purse than a wallet, so I tended to hide it at school. It had beads on it. In a pattern like this:

which to me looked like a really depressed bloke but which, to Mum, used to be about the most important thing in the world, because it's the sign for CND, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

Five pounds.

AND A BANK CARD
.

Yes, I replied uncertainly.

LOOK, CHILL OUT. I'VE HAD AN IDEA FOR THE HAIR. AT VIDAL SASSOON YOU CAN HAVE A TRAINEE DO YOUR HAIR FOR FREE
.

A trainee—you mean let someone who doesn't know how to cut hair cut my hair? Great idea.

I SAID IT WAS FREE
.

Mmmmm . . .

AND THEY'RE GOOD. WELL, BETTER THAN THE ALBANIAN BUTCHER
.

So we went to the Vidal Sassoon's on Cross Street.

I'd never been into a proper hairdresser's before, and I felt self-conscious and stupid standing there by the counter, with
posh ladies everywhere. There was an atmosphere of restless activity, with people darting around and carrying things and doing stuff to people's hair. It was a bit like the bridge on the
Enterprise
, but with less of an alien presence and more ladies with towels on their heads.

Finally a man looked at me and said, “Can I help you?”

He was young—I find it a bit hard to tell how old grownups are, but I'd guess he was in his early twenties. He had on a black T-shirt made from some kind of stretchy stuff, and a pair of black jeans with a chain going from the back pocket to the zip at the front, a bit like the good old days of punk, except he was no more a punk than he was a pelican. But it was his hair that I noticed. He had a sort of band of it going diagonally across the top of his head, standing up about five centimeters from the rest of his hair.

THAT'S THE ONE. THE HOXTON FIN. GET ONE OF THOSE
.

“Can you cut my hair?” I said in a small voice, adding, “For free?”

The young man smiled at me.

“You want to be a guinea pig? We usually do that in the evening. And shouldn't you be in school?”

TELL HIM YOU'RE A STUDENT
.

“I'm a student.”

SHOW HIM YOUR BUS PASS, TELL HIM IT'S A STUDENT ID CARD
.

I waved my bus pass vaguely at the man. Let's call him Hoxton. Well, Hoxton didn't seem very interested in my card, but his face went all twinkly as if he was finding something irresistibly amusing in my being there.

“We're not busy. I'll see if one of the girls can do you.” He
paused before he said “do you,” which made it seem mucky. “If anyone asks,” he went on, “remember to tell them that you're a . . .
student
.”

“But I
am
a—”

I had to wait around for twenty minutes. I spent the time reading magazines. They had loads of them. Mostly for ladies, but some for men too. The ones for men had mainly pictures of women about to burst out of their bras, and then articles about how to get a six-pack, and how it was now okay to use stuff to make your face soft, and what clothes you should wear, and I read those, but I only enjoyed the sections about gadgets, like iPods and plasma-screen TVs and satellite navigation systems.

Jack was taking it all in, getting excited about the ladies coming out of their bras, but he was not very interested in the satellite navigation systems, which is probably because he already knew where he was and where he was going.

And then a Chinesey girl was sort of bowing in front of me, although it looked more like she was ducking projectiles being fired at her. She was taller than you'd expect, and did a lot of stooping as if she was ashamed of it. In her land she was probably a giant, and that was why she had come here, so she could look more normal. Funny that, how sometimes you have to go somewhere else to be more yourself.

She took me by the arm over to a row of sinks. I'd never had a haircut where they washed your hair first.

The Chinesey lady was actually pretty cool-looking, in a manga kind of way. She had on this sort of bandolier across her front with her scissors and combs in it, which gave her a martial-arts look, and the sound of her voice was like a bird chirping, and about as meaningful. Sometimes she'd say one of her
chirruping things and then look at me as if I was supposed to answer, and so I'd say yes or no, or sometimes just laugh, and everyone seemed happy with the arrangement.

She may or may not have said that her name was Miko.

Once I'd got over the embarrassment and weirdness of having a girl person who wasn't my mum messing about on top of my head, I began to quite like having my hair washed. I had to lie back, and there was a semicircle cut out of the sink for your neck to go in, and it all meant that I was looking up at Miko as she looked down at my hair. She was putting a lot of concentration into it, as if she had to work out exactly how much cleaning each individual hair needed. Jack was liking it too, and kept up a distracting commentary, along the lines of:
THAT'S IT, BABY, SQUEEEEEEEZE, YEAH, ONE MORE TIME, SQUEEEEEEEEEEEZE
.

And then Miko was toweling me, and moving me to another chair in front of a mirror, and I'm pretty sure she said, “What we do here?” sort of holding up two bits of hair like horns.

For about seven seconds I couldn't think of anything to say. And then I saw the Hoxton man, and I pointed at him and said, “I want one of those,” and he stopped and pulled a little face and wiggled his hips. “A Hoxton Fin,” I declared loudly. Miko giggled, putting her hand over her mouth. All the other hair-dressers within earshot looked around, some with shocked expressions, some with wry amusement. Hoxton himself shimmied off.

Well, to cut (some kind of pun in there, but I can't quite pull it out) a long story short, I was out of there two hours later with the sort of haircut you might see on a pop star or trendy hair-dresser but not, usually, on a nerdy kid.

I felt different.

I kept checking myself out in shop windows. I liked what I saw. And so did Jack.

COOL
.

People don't say “cool” anymore. It's not cool.

GOD'S TEETH, YOU SPEAK SOME ERRANT SCUT. “COOL” HAS BECOME A CLASSIC WORD. IT CAN NEVER GO OUT OF FASHION. ANYWAY, YOU SAY “COOL” ALL THE TIME
.

Well, the cool kids in my school don't say “cool.” They say “hectic,” or “cushie,” or “boo.”