Jack Tumor (21 page)

“That's about it.”

“That's like a whole adolescence in one evening. Or like when you're dying, and your life flashes before you . . . Oh, what's up, Heck?”

So I thought it was time to tell Stan about my head.

“The thing is, Stan, I didn't just faint the other day. I mean, I did, but it's happened before and there have been other things happening too. When I went to the doctor the other day, it was because they were worried that there was something serious up with my brain. I had a scan and they'll get the results soon, but it might be bad. It might be really bad.”

“Bad like what?”

“Bad like a brain tumor.”

There was quite a long silence. I was expecting Stan to come out with something sympathetic in the consoling line, but eventually what he said was: “You haven't got broadband, have you?”

I scoffed: “Broadband? You know very well we haven't even got a computer. We haven't got satellite telly, a DVD player. I haven't got a mobile and we don't have a microwave or a car or any of the equipment that makes life worth living. We have mung beans instead. Hell, if it was up to Mum, I wouldn't even have a toothbrush and I'd be cleaning my teeth with special twigs. Why?”

“To check out brain tumors on the Internet. Let's go to the library.”

BORING
.

Which we did. We had to wait for twenty minutes for a free slot, which meant hanging about with the tramps and bums sheltering from the rain, and the mums with crying babies here for the Saturday-morning sing-along, but then it was plain sailing.

Well, plain sailing
into the abyss
.

I suppose Stan thought that a bit of knowledge would help to
banish any irrational fears I might be experiencing. What our Internet search mainly did was to reassure me that my fears were perfectly rational. All my symptoms pointed to a brain tumor, and I had over 160 different types to choose from, split up into half a dozen different groups. One site happily described these groups as “families,” but, frankly, any family that goes about eating people's brains is even more dysfunctional than mine. The different types were classified according to what kinds of cells they were derived from, but I found that a bit hard to take in. Some types picked on kids, some on adults, some on both. Some liked to eat particular bits of your brain, some chewed away contentedly on any old lobe. Strangely there didn't seem to be anything about the brain tumors that jabber at you or try to get you to grope girls or make you get your hair cut, but then even the Internet has its limits.

I found out that brain tumors are the biggest cause of death by cancer among teenagers and young adults (they only count as number two among actual kids, because of good ole leukemia), and that, compared to lots of other cancers, treatment is still pretty hit-and-miss. Only a third of adults with brain tumors live for five years, although the picture was better for childhood brain tumors, in which case, assuming I still counted as a child, I had a two-thirds chance of making it, that's if I wasn't already riddled with the stuff. Of course, if Jack was one of the nastier types then I was well and truly shafted.

And maybe I was tumbling headlong into cliché, but the truth is that knowledge
did
make me feel a bit better about it all. It wasn't exactly that I'd had nothing to fear but fear itself, no, not at all, I had plenty to fear, but at least now the fear had boundaries and didn't stretch away to infinity.

So then we left the library, and I asked Stan if he wanted to come back to ours for a bean something, and he declined on the grounds of not wanting to, and we wandered around for a while until we got near school, and the social club, and I remembered the huge knob on the wall, so we went for another look.

It was still there, although I thought that it appeared less distinct than the last time I'd seen it, as if maybe it was sinking back into the brickwork again.

“There's definitely something weird about it,” I said as we stood there.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, like how it's just appeared, like it's a message.”

“Funny kind of message. Like, what? ‘Look at me, I'm a great big willy.' “

“It's not just that. It's a . . . symbol. It's so, I don't know, human; kind of weak and magnificent at the same time. Or like the spirit of humanity, showing through the brutality around, triumphing over the system.”

“And who is the messenger supposed to be?”

“I've a feeling it was some lone rebel, a freedom fighter, sort of. Because he wasn't just flipping the bird at the school, although he was doing that as well, but he was saying that if you try, you can make something special, something beautiful, and not just scrawl crappy cocks all over the place. He's saying you don't just revolt
against
, but that you revolt
into
something.”

Stan looked at me blankly. “Heck, you've been thinking about it too much.”

“You're the deep one, Stan. You think about everything too much.”

There was a pause, and then he said, “I'd better get home.” And he began to wander off, but then he turned.

“Something else I've got to tell you. About Tierney and his mob. He's really pissed off. He says he's going to . . . do stuff to you. He says he's going to kill you.”

Kill you. The kind of thing we said all the time. I'll kill you. Hadn't Tierney said it before? You're dead. Something like that. He didn't mean it. And anyway, there was a queue, right?

S
tan went one way home, and I went another. I thought I'd take a shortcut across the low, damp, tussocky field by the side of the school—the gypsy field, it was usually called, because the gypsies turned up there sometimes, and stayed for a while, and then left. It was always worth having a look around after they'd gone. Not because there'd be anything valuable left behind, because that wasn't the gypsy way, but occasionally there would be something interesting. A dead animal, or a burned chair, or a fridge with its insides all gone.

THAT WAS ALL RUBBISH, YOU KNOW. THE INTERNET STUFF
.

Rubbish? Which bit? The bit that gave me a decent chance of living?

A LITTLE LEARNING IS A DANGEROUS THING
.

Dangerous to you.

I KEEP TELLING YOU, WE'RE IN THIS TOGETHER. YOU HAVE TO TRUST ME
.

Yeah, one for all, all for one. Together we stand, divided we
fall. Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone. You're just scared because Dr. Jones is going to cut you out and slice you up and eat you with a fine Chianti.

I expected a quick comeback: mine wasn't the kind of tumor to take things lying down. But nothing.

Jack?

Still nothing.

Jack? C'mon.

Silence. Seemed like I'd really got to him.

Okay, sorry. Didn't mean anything by it.

Finally, his tone one of wounded dignity, Jack managed to speak:
ARE WE NOT HURT WITH THE SAME WEAPONS, SUBJECT TO THE SAME DISEASES, HEALED BY THE SAME MEANS? IF YOU PRICK US DO WE NOT BLEED? IF YOU POISON US DO WE NOT DIE
?

Like I said, I'm really sorry if I hurt your feelings. But you started it.

DID NOT
.

Did too.

And that was that, but I could tell Jack was still sulking. Although, to be fair, that whole confronting-your-own-mortality thing can do that to a tumor. Or a boy.

I was trudging along, following the path by the stream, leaning into the fine rain, which was probably causing all kinds of grief to the goshawk on my head, when I saw someone coming from the opposite direction. I knew who it was straightaway. Something about the way she looked like she wished that she wasn't there at all, as if she aspired to invisibility. And then there was that hair, finer than the fine rain, pale and lost and beautiful.
And she saw me, and I felt her stiffen with surprise and shame and something else.

GOD'S TEETH, NOT HER. WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE HER
?

Oh, welcome back. And shut up. I'm not in the mood for your noise.

But my heart was in my mouth, and I didn't know why.

BLOODY OBVIOUS. NOT THAT THAT MAKES IT ANY LESS STUPID
.

I'd never seen Amanda Something out of school before, didn't know she even lived around here. She was wearing a plain brown dress that almost had a religious look about it. The sort of thing a trendy nun would wear, the sort who does work in the community, visiting prisons, that kind of thing.

If she kept coming, there would be no avoiding a meeting. I think she was contemplating turning around and walking away in the opposite direction, but she knew that that would be even more embarrassing than carrying on. And so, after a second, she carried on, and we approached each other. She was looking down at her shoes. They were as uncool as mine, but in a more plodding, old-fashioned way. If you hit a six-year-old child with one of my shoes (the standard measure for shoe clunkiness), you could probably make it cry, but it would be hard to do any real damage. If you hit the same child with one of Amanda's, you would probably break its skull, and most likely death would ensue. En-shoe. Ha!

And at the last second she looked up. We were a meter apart. She had makeup covering her birthmark.

“Hello,” she said, and it looked like it might have been hard work.

It took me a few seconds to think of a clever response, but when it came it was a classic.

“Hello.”

She was blushing. I was blushing. It was a blush-a-thon, a blush-off, hardcore blush-on-blush action. So, we had something in common. But I couldn't leave things at just hello and blush.

“Do you live around here? I haven't seen you before. Here, I mean. I've seen you at school. You're called Amanda, aren't you?”

That all came out a bit too quickly, say eighty-five miles an hour in a thirty-mile-an-hour zone. But she smiled, and both of our blushes began to fade.

“Yes. I mean no. My name is Amanda, but I don't really live here.” Her voice was very quiet, but precise. “I was just going past on the bus and . . . I thought I'd get off. Don't know why.”

Did she mean that she'd spotted me from the bus, and got off just to meet me? But then she'd seemed surprised to see me, surprised and dismayed. Sometimes the more you think about people the stranger they become. Sooner or later you always hit a layer of mystery.

“I know you're called Hector Brunty. And I know that you're kind . . . that you did a kind thing, once.” And then, after a moment, she added, “You look different,” and the blush came back. “Your hair. I like it.” And she looked down at her clunky shoes again.

“Thanks. Um, yours is nice too.”

I CAN'T LISTEN TO THIS. LOOK, HECK, WE'VE GOT TO DITCH THIS GIRL. LOOK AT HER! SHE'S A
—

I shut him out.

Amanda gave a little laugh and pushed back some strands that had fallen in front of her face.

There was another silence, and if you think this sounds like there were too many silences and that this must have been terrible, then you think wrong, because it wasn't. It was so pent up with things,
feelings
, I suppose you'd have to call them, that this silence, this space, was about the most exciting thing in the world.

“What were you doing here?” she asked.

“I don't live far away. And I came with Stan—you know Stan, little guy, my best friend—to have a look at—” The great big willy. Don't say that, don't even
think
of saying that. “Er, just to hang out.”

“Where are you off to now?”

“Nowhere. Nowhere special, I mean. Want to come?”

Amanda smiled and nodded, but didn't say anything. And then we set off across the field away from the path and the stream. The ground was uneven with little mounds and troughs and soggy places that were almost like quicksand, and Amanda's foot went down into one of the troughs, and I put my hand out to steady her and our fingers touched, and then we were holding hands and her hand in mine felt like the greatest thing that there could be, and thank God Jack T. had crept off somewhere, because I didn't want him around to see this, didn't want to listen to his comments.

And then it was my turn to have my foot sink down into something, and Amanda smiled at me as if I'd done it to make her feel less clumsy, but something went crunch and for a second
I thought I'd broken my ankle, except it didn't hurt very much, or at all, really, so we both crouched down to have a look at what had crunched.

My foot had gone through the turf overhanging a cavity in the soil. I pulled it out of the hole, and moved the grass aside so we could see.

Something white. Pottery, I thought. No, bones. White bones. Broken white bones.

For another horrific moment I thought that my first instinct was correct and my leg was smashed to bits, but of course my leg was right there, still perfectly fine.

“What is it?” asked Amanda, with a little shudder of horror. She pressed herself into me, as if I might be the one to save her from bones.

“I think it's an animal.”

A BRACELET OF BRIGHT HAIR ABOUT THE BONE
.

So Jack was still there, watching. Don't know what he meant, though. There was no hair left on these cold bones.

I found a stick and had a bit of a poke around. The bones were pure white and as dry as chalk. Old bones. Ribs. Legs. Small bones. Amanda was close beside me, her strawberry hair touching my face. Her lips had parted, and she was breathing through her mouth. I moved some more grass with the stick and kicked aside the heavy soil and found the creature's head.

It was a dog, some kind of little dog.

WEBSTER WAS MUCH POSSESSED BY DEATH, AND SAW THE SKULL BENEATH THE SKIN
.

Lipless, it grinned at me, and that should have been creepy, but it was really just kind of sad, as if the little dog was trying to
be friendly, even in its death and decay, waiting, as the years passed, to wag its tail, fetch a stick. To play dead.