Jack Tumor (26 page)

 

But Stan didn't look convinced, and he was right not to be. I had in mind something much worse than fighting Tierney. I was just waiting for the right time.

And then old Mrs. Trimble rang her handbell and it was time to go in, and still there was no Amanda.

A
fter break nothing much happened. Corridors, classrooms, shuffling bodies, a yellow stink in the toilets. Until I was sitting in the physics lab, and it was hot. Equations, calculations, vectors. The numbers that map the universe. And if numbers can tell us everything there is to know about stars and atoms, about nebulae and quarks, why should they be silent about the other things that matter, our emotions, our dreams? Surely there was an equation somewhere that would give me the answer to the question of love.

No, not singular. Multiple. The questions of love.

       Who?

              Where?

                         Why?

                                When will it start?

                                                          When will it stop?

And there, looking out of the window over the damp coarse grass of the gypsy field where we had found the bleached bones
of the dog, where I had touched the hard metal at the tip of the bolt, and then touched her fingers, I thought I had that equation within my grasp, and I reached for it, and the numbers and symbols danced translucent around my fingers, and I could feel them, slippery, jellied, but I could not hold them.

HANG UP PHILOSOPHY! UNLESS PHILOSOPHY CAN MAKE A JULIET
.

Hey, Jack.

HEY, HECK
.

Feeling a bit not-so-good again. Any chance of you easing up back there? Pull in one of your—what did you call them?— tendrils.

       I

                  need

       more

                  time.

TIME. SHALL WE STOP IT? I THINK NOT. YOU KNOW THAT ONLY LIVED TIME IS PRECIOUS
.

There are so many things. To do.

THE TIME OF LIFE IS SHORT; TO SPEND THAT SHORTNESS BASELY WERE TOO LONG
.

Base? Isn't it you who wants me to . . .? Is it just me or has the world gone funny? You have stopped time again, haven't you, without asking me?

And the kids in the class, and Mr. Curlew teaching, were not moving, and there was no noise—not the droning of the teacher or the whisperings and murmurings of the class, or the sounds of chairs scraping or the buzzing of the dying fluorescent light.

OKAY, NOT GOOD
.

Panic in his voice.

HECK, WAKE UP
.

He's gone too far. He knows he's gone too far.

I'LL SLEEP. YOU WAKE
.

And then I came back into myself and the noise of the classroom returned. I'd been in some kind of a trance. There was drool on my chin. Nobody had noticed. At least I hadn't pissed my pants. Or fallen off my stool into a foaming fit on the floor.

“With us again, Brunty? Try to stay awake.”

“Sir.”

 

Amanda. I'd begun to wonder if Amanda had decided not to come into school today. The horror of seeing me. The shame. Something like that.

I went out for lunch with the gang to our usual niche, but I wasn't hungry. Which, it turned out, was a shame.

 

 

 

Well, the unexpectedly edible lunch should have been a pleasant surprise, but as I said, I wasn't hungry, plus it added to the general doom and gloom. If Mum (aided, no doubt, by
Clytemnestra) had thought things were so bad that I needed a real lunch rather than horseradish fritters, then, well, then things were really bad.

The playground began to fill up as the school-lunchers filtered in. Stan said to me, “Did you hear about Flaherty?”

“That he's a stupid wanker?”

Gonad and Smurf laughed.

“No, that his dad's been put away.”

And I half laughed, and then stopped.

“That's bad luck.”

“He's in trouble,” said Gonad. “The only reason he hasn't had a serious kicking is that everyone's afraid of his dad. If it is his dad.”

“Yeah,” we all said. Flaherty used to annoy us, but he was a major goad to the hard bastards and they hated him.

“He can take care of himself,” I said, but without much conviction.

I handed out my food, and when everything was gone except the crumbs brushed off for the sparrows, we got up to find somewhere else to slouch. It was then that I saw her, and the gloom of the day lifted and I instantly felt 67 percent happier. (I rounded up, of course, from 66.6 recurring.)

And then my focus widened and I took in the scene around her. There were other girls—the hawklike handmaidens of Uma. For a moment I thought that the scene was a happy one, that the girls were enjoying some joke together. And for a while that might have been how it was. The fierce girls were smiling, and Amanda was smiling back uncertainly.

But no.

It was changing.

They were laughing. Amanda was looking around. She saw me. The uncertain smile returned and she began to walk towards me.

WALK AWAY
.

No!

THERE'S NOTHING IN THIS FOR YOU. LOOK AROUND. PEOPLE ARE WATCHING AGAIN
.

I don't care.

YOU SHOULD
.

Amanda was searching my face as she came, trying to find an answering smile there. But I was busy with Jack, trying to shut him up, trying to make him go away.

He wouldn't go away.

FOUL
.

No.

MISSHAPEN
.

No.

POXED
.

No.

And Amanda was here now, talking to me, but I couldn't hear.

SHE IS AS UGLY AS A WARTHOG'S SCROTUM. SHE IS DISEASED
.

“Shut up!”

SHE IS A MUTANT
.

“Piss off. Piss off. Piss off.”

SHE IS POLLUTION, CONTAGION, DEATH FOR US
.

“Shut up and piss off!” I was screaming. I knew I was screaming.

LOOK AT HER. SHE'S
—

Finally, despairingly, I cried out, “Go away and leave me alone, please.”

And the girls who had been laughing stopped laughing, and I don't know if what remained in their eyes was satiation or disgust, and the crowd of people around Amanda—around me— parted and she ran through, covering her face with her hands and, as in a kind of echo, as a replay, I heard what she had been saying.

“Tell me it isn't true, tell me you didn't see her, tell me you didn't go there with her, tell me you didn't take her to the place where we were together, tell me you didn't.”

And what she had heard in return, as she stood imploring and desperate before the crowd of tormentors, was “shut up,” “piss off,” “go away,” and “leave me alone, please.” And, for all I knew, “pollution,” “contagion,” “diseased,” and “mutant.”

And I looked at the faces in the crowd, and I could not see my friends, but I did see Tierney and his followers, and he was grinning like a skull, and they were nodding and their eyes met mine, and they knew me.

Tierney, Johnson, Murdo, No-Name, Brunty.

The new gang.

T
he horror of it. And I was rescued by, of all people, Mordred. Of course, I didn't know he was coming to rescue me to begin with—I just saw him scampering on his little feet towards me across the playground.

“Brunty . . . ah, er, Hector. Your mother has telephoned”— his voice here broke and quavered a bit, strongly suggesting he was scared of Mum—”and, er, she would like you to go, as it were, home.”

“Now, sir?”

“Yes, now. Of course, now. Straightaway. Immediately. In a word, now.”

Mordred left, his hand making meaningless gesticulations, as if he were mentally rehearsing a speech to a Nazi rally.

“I'll come with you if you like.”

Stan was there again.

“It's okay, Stan. I'm good. I'm good.”

“It'll get me out of religion. Father McGuire's coming in, and you know the smell of whiskey makes me feel sick.”

Father McGuire was one of the two priests serving the parish and the school. McGuire was ancient and scrofulous, and he didn't like the kids at all. He regaled us with what would happen to us in hell, which involved a lot of burning, and a grab bag of inconveniences ranging from impalement (bad) to being forced to read the works of J. K. Rowling over and over again for all eternity (v. bad). McGuire obviously looked back fondly on the good old days when he could strap boys for failing to look suitably religious, but now he had to make do with coming up close and shouting into your face with his brown teeth all over you and the spray flying out and with it a sulfurous stench, and most of us thought that the strap would have been better.

The other priest was Father Conway, who liked to be called Jim, which may well have been his name. He was young and nice and never shouted at us or threatened us with hell if we “interfered with ourselves” (a favorite topic of Father McGuire). Because he was nice, he was generally thought to be gay, although I never heard a report of any actual interference or even inappropriate ogling. His religion classes took the form of meditations on some moral problem, such as why it might be nice to be nice to each other, and how it was not nice not being nice to each other, and he rarely mentioned God at all except in a very backgroundy kind of way, along with the suggestion that he might well be nice.

But McGuire was a good enough reason to get out of school. So we went and got our schoolbags and coats and set off back to my house.

“Okay,” said Stan, “what the hell was that all about?”

“That?”

“That girl, the one who came over. I don't know her name. It didn't seem too good, what happened.”

More explanations. I told Stan about meeting Amanda after we'd parted company on Saturday, and I said that I really liked her.

“So why were you so nasty to her? In front of everyone?”

I knew, I knew. My heart ached for her, ached for what I'd done.

YET EACH MAN KILLS THE THING HE LOVES
.

I pointed to my head: “This makes me do stupid stuff. I'm not in control anymore.”

“Do you want me to carry your bag?”

“I'm not a crip, you know.”

“Yeah, sorry.”

“Anyway, you'll stink it all up,” I said, and I shoved him and he shoved me back, and we laughed until we reached my house.

“Do you want to come in?”

“Nah, I'll just . . . Oh, hello, Ms. Brunty.”

“Hello, Stan.”

She must have been watching from the window. Her face was rigid. Stan wandered away, either back to school or off into town.

We went inside. Clyte was there, looking serious. There was no hugging or emoting, which was a relief.

“Dr. Jones called,” said Mum when I'd thrown my bag in the corner and taken off my coat. “Not his secretary, but himself, which was good of him, because he must be a busy man.”

Twittering.

“What did he say?”

I knew it wasn't good. If it was good they'd already have told me. Hey, they'd be wearing party hats and doing the Highland fling.

Pause. Pain.

“They found something on the scan.”

“I knew they would.”

“They want you to go into the hospital on Thursday.”

“For more tests?”

Hopeful. Not really hopeful.

“No . . . yes, well, they . . . Oh, come here, Heck. I wasn't going to do this. I was going to be strong. But I'm not. I'm not. I'm not strong.”

And then she was hugging me, and kissing the top of my head. And I had to comfort her and say “there, there” and that sort of thing, and finally she was able to carry on.

“They want you to go in on Thursday, and then they're going to operate on Friday. Dr. Jones said it was urgent . . . that they had to take out what they could.”

“What they could?”

“No . . . all of it. They'll take out all of it. He said it would all be fine, he said they would get all of it. All of it, he said.”

THE HEARTLESS SWINE
.

“They're good now,” said Clytemnestra. “They zapped my breast. Not a trace.”

“Of what, your breast?”

“No, my— Oh, you're joking. That's good. That's very good.”

“I'm not frightened, Mum,” I said.

WELL, I AM. IT'S FINE FOR YOU TO BE ALL BLASÉ ABOUT THIS. YOU'RE NOT THE ONE THAT'S GOING TO BE SLICED
.

“Well, I am, actually, when you think about it.”

“Think about what, Heck?”

“Nothing, Mum.”

I took the rest of the day off school, and lay on the bed trying hard to think about nothing at all, because none of the things I might be able to think about were good things, and most of them entirely fitted the description of frigging terrible.