Num8ers (31 page)

“I don’t see numbers, son. I’m not like you and your mum.”

So she does know.

“How do you know about them?”

“Your mum told me. I knew about her years ago, and then when she found out about you, she rang me up.”

Suddenly, I’ve got to tell her, tell her the thing I’ve been bottling up all summer.

“Nan — half the people in London are going to die next year. I’m not making it up. I’ve seen their numbers.”

She nods.

“I know.”

“You know?”

“Yeah, Jem told me about 2027. Warned me.”

My hands go up to the sides of my head. Nan knew! Mum knew! I’m shaking, but I’m not scared, I’m angry. How dare they keep this from me? Why leave me on my own with it?

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t she?”

The anger’s fizzing through me now, in my arms and legs. I kick at the board under the kitchen cupboards.

“Don’t do that!”

I want to smash something. I kick out again, and this time the board thunks down onto the floor.

“Adam! Stop it!”

Nan’s on her feet now, coming toward me. She makes a grab for my arms. I try to shrug her off, but she’s strong, much stronger than you’d think to look at her. We stand wrestling with each other for a few seconds. Then, quick as a flash, she lets go of one of my arms and slaps me across the face.

“Not here!” she shouts. “Not in my house! I won’t have it!”

I come back to myself then, I see things like they’re happening to someone else, a teenage boy grappling with an old woman in her kitchen, and I feel the shame spreading through me like a blush.

“I’m sorry, Nan,” I say. I rub my cheek where she got me. I don’t know where to look, what to do with myself.

“Should think so,” she says, and she turns to put the kettle on. “If you’ve calmed down, if you’ll
listen,
then we can talk about it.”

“OK,” I say.

“In fact, you make the tea. I need a smoke.”

She sits down and reaches for her packet, and her hand is shaking, just a little, as she draws a cigarette out and lights it.

When the tea’s ready, I sit down opposite her.

“Tell me, Nan,” I say. “Tell me everything you know. About me and Mum and Dad. I’ve got a right”

She’s studying the tabletop, or pretending to. She brushes a little bit of ash onto the floor, and then she looks up at me, blows a long trail of smoke out of the corner of her mouth, and says, “Yeah, you do have a right, and I s’pose now’s the time.”

And she tells me.

He’s trying the door.

I hold my breath.

In the darkness, I can hear the handle turn, the scraping of metal on wood as the door pushes against the chair I left tipped up against it. There’s a scuffling sound as He moves the door backward and forward, gently at first, then with more force. I can picture His face — confusion turning to anger — and I hunch up farther on the bed, sitting upright, knees up to my chin, and I cross both sets of fingers.

The room falls quiet for a few seconds, and then He’s there again. He can t believe it. He needs to check.

Then footsteps, and silence.

It worked! It fucking worked!

I hug my knees in closer and rock from side to side. I want to shout out, scream, dance, but I can’t break the silence. I can t wake the others: Marty and Luke in the room next door, my mum farther down the landing.

I should sleep now. It’s safe to sleep. I uncurl my legs and slide them down under the duvet. I’m tired, but not sleepy, and I lie there for ages, triumphant and scared at the same time. I’ve won a battle, but the war’s not over yet. Rain starts battering against the window.

I ache for sleep, eight hours of dreamless blankness, but when I do drift off, there’s no rest. I’m back in the nightmare that waits for me every night.

The flames are orange.

I’m being burned alive. I’m trapped, penned in by rubble.

The flames are yellow.

The baby’s screaming. We’ll die here, me and her. The boy with the scarred face is here, too. He’s fire and flame himself, scarred, burned, a dark shape in the thundering, crackling, spitting heat.

The flames are white.

And he grabs the baby, my baby, and he walks away and is consumed.

The room’s still dark when I force myself awake. The back of my T-shirt and my sheets are drenched. There’s a date in my head, neon-bright, dazzling my eyes from the inside. The first of January 2027. I’ve never dreamt that before. It’s new. He’s brought it to me. The boy.

The boy at school
is
the boy in my nightmare. It’s him. I know it is. He’s found his way out of my head and into my life. How? How has he done that? It’s bullshit. It’s not real. Stuff like that doesn’t happen.

I reach out next to me and switch on the light. I squint until my eyes adjust and then I see the chair wedged up against the door handle.

Of course stuff happens,
I think dully.
Stuff happens all the time.

They were famous! My mum and dad. I never knew they were famous. For a couple of weeks in 2010, everyone in the country knew about them, was looking for them. “Most Wanted.” For something they didn’t do — just wrong place, wrong time. And all because Mum could see the numbers, like me.

Nan’s kept some of the clippings from the papers — gives me chills looking at them. My mum and dad, so young, as young as I am now, staring out from the front page. They were only kids
when they had me. Well, Dad never even knew about me. He died before Mum knew she was pregnant.

If only I’d known about all this. I could’ve asked Mum, we could’ve talked about it…. All she ever said to me about the numbers was that they were secret. I could never tell anyone their number. And the only person I ever did tell was her. I wrote her number down on a picture of her when I was five, before I knew what it meant.

What the hell did that do to her? What must her last few years have been like, knowing? I’ve got part of the answer now. Next to my notebook, there’s an envelope folded in half. When she’s finished telling me Mum and Dad’s story, Nan gives it me.

“She wanted you to have this. When the time was right. I reckon that’s now.”

My name’s written on the front in Mum’s writing — I’d know it anywhere. I swear my heart stops for a second when I see it. I can’t believe it’s real. Something from Mum. Something for me.

And Nan’s been holding on to it. What right did she have…? It’s not hers, it’s mine. The anger sparks up again.

“How long have you had this?” I say.

“She gave it to me a few weeks before she…went.”

“Why didn’t you give it to me? It’s mine. It’s got my name on it.”

“I told you,” she says slowly, like she’s explaining something to an idiot, “she asked me to keep it for you. For when you was ready.”

“And you’d know, would you? You’d know what was best?”
She looks me straight in the eye. She can feel the tension as much as I can and she’s not backing down.

“Yeah, at least your mum thought so. She trusted me.”

I snort.

“I’m fifteen. I don’t need you making decisions for me. You don’t know nothing about me.”

“I know more than you think, son. Now, why don’t you calm down for a minute and open that envelope?”

The envelope. I’ve almost forgotten that’s what we’re arguing about.

“I’m gonna read it on my own,” I say, and I hold it up to my chest. Mine, not hers. She’s disappointed, I can see that — she wants to know what’s in it, nosy old cow. Then she sniffs loudly and reaches for another cigarette.

“’Course,” she says. “’Course you do. Come and talk to me when you’ve done. I’ll be right here.”

I take it up to my room and sit on the bed. My private space, a room of my own, except that it’s not mine. I’ve only got a handful of my things with me. Everything else here is my dad’s: a boy about the same age as me, a boy I never knew and who never knew about me. I’m inside a shrine, surrounded by his stuff. Nan never moved a thing when he died, and you could tell it hurt her to put me in here, but there was nowhere else I could go.

I put the envelope on my lap and stare at it. Mum’s writing. Her hand held this envelope. Is there any of her left on it? I smooth my fingers across it. I want to read whatever’s inside, but I also know that once I’ve read it, that’ll be it. There’ll be
nothing else from her. It’ll be like saying good-bye all over again.

I don’t want it to end. I know it has already. I know she’s gone, but I’ve got a little bit of her back now.

“Mum,” I say. My voice sounds strange, like it belongs to someone else.

I want her to be here, with me, so much.

And I open the envelope, and she is.

The instant I start reading, I can hear her voice, see her sitting propped up in bed, writing. Her hair’s gone, and there’s no weight on her at all anymore. She’s so thin you can’t hardly recognize her face. But it’s still her. It’s still Mum.

A tear drips off the end of my chin and splashes onto the paper. The ink spreads out like a firework, turning her kisses all blurry.

“No!”

I wipe the paper with my thumb, but that just makes it worse. I find an old tissue in my pocket and dab it dry, and all the time the tears keep pouring down my face. Then I put the letter on the end of the bed, out of harm’s way, and I let go.

I haven’t cried for a long time, not since before she died. Now I can’t stop. It’s like a dam bursting — something bigger than me sweeping me away. My whole body’s crying,
out of control; great heaving sobs; tears and snot; noises I never knew I had in me. And then I curl up in a ball and I rock backward and forward, backward and forward, for I don’t know how long ‘til I slowly come to a stop. And there’s nothing left. No more tears.

I look around me like I’m seeing the room for the first time, and I feel the anger back again, tingling in the tips of my fingers, pulsing right through me.

I knew this was a bad place. I knew we shouldn’t have come.

I slam out of the room and down the stairs. Nan’s still in the kitchen. Cup of tea in front of her and a cigarette in her mouth.

“She never wanted us to come to London! She wanted us to stay in Weston! Did you know that? Did you? Did you?”

I’m leaning on the other side of the table, gripping it with both hands, gripping so hard my knuckles are white.

Nan puts her hand up across her forehead and rubs it. She shuts her eyes for a second, but when she opens them, they’re defiant.

“She said something, yes.”

“She said something, and you still brought us here?”

“I did, but…” She thinks she can argue with me, justify herself. She’s got to be kidding. Nothing she can say will make this better. She’s been found out for the lying, selfish cow she is.

“When I said I didn’t want to go! When Mum had said not to come!”

“Adam…”

“She trusted you!”

“I know, but…” She reaches her hand out toward the ashtray. Her fingers are trembling as she stubs out her cigarette. The dish is overflowing — stale, disgusting, like her. I reach forward, too, pick the vile thing up, and hurl it against the wall. It smashes when it hits the floor. Glass and ash spray out.

“Adam!” she screams. “That’s enough!”

But it’s not enough. Not nearly enough.

I tighten my grip on the table and heave it over, sending it crashing down on its side by the sink, broken china and brown tea mixing with ash and glass.

“Jesus Christ! Stop it, Adam!”

“Shut up. Shut the fuck up!”

“Don’t you dare…”

The ashtray’s not enough. The table’s not enough. It’s not their fault, anyway. It’s hers.

And now I’ve got to get out of here. ‘Cause I know what I want to do next and that’s crossing a line. It’s wrong. And I want to so much, but if I start…if I start, I might not stop.

“I hate you! I hate you!”

I’m out of the kitchen and through the living room and out the front door before I can change my mind. The cold air hits me, and I stop for a minute to suck it in. But standing still’s no good. There’s too much energy charging through me, I’m too
wound up, so I walk and then I run. And as I run it starts raining, icy drops stinging my face.

I’m not running away from her. I’m running away from what I might have done to her. It’s better this way. Better for both of us if I keep on running and never go back.