The Bubble Boy (15 page)

I pick up the remote and turn the TV on.

I sigh and walk over to my PlayStation and put my headphones on.

My phone buzzes again.

I press the button. All the screens flicker on. It’s dark, just shadows, then a light flashes on and lights a path that leads to a door. I hear a voice in my
headphones.

‘Can you hear me?’

‘Amir?’

Amir laughs. ‘Well, at least I know you hear me. But can you see too?’

‘Yes, I can see. But Amir, what are you doing?’

The camera moves up the path towards the door. It’s painted green with little bits of red and there’s a bronze number 8. Amir’s hand appears and lifts a knocker.

‘Amir, where are you?’

A light switches on above the door. I hear a lock turn. Amir chuckles.

‘Joe, you say you wish you meet my family.’

‘Um, yes, but . . .’

The door opens and the light shines out. A woman stands in the doorway. She wears an orange sari with a bright blue sash across her shoulder. She’s got a bindi mark on her head.

Amir steps over the doormat and gives her a kiss. ‘Joe, this is Abha, my wife. Abha, this is Joe.’

‘Hello, Joe.’

‘Say hello, Joe.’

I kneel up on my bed. ‘Hello, Abba,’ I say.

‘No, Ab
ha
,’ says Amir. ‘Abha – beautiful glow, lustrous beauty.’

Abha puts her hand over her mouth. ‘Amir, stop.’

‘But it true,’ says Amir. ‘Don’t you think, Joe?’

‘Yes.’ I think she’s one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen.

Abha smiles and looks at the ground. I hear screaming and shouting. Three children run through the hall and disappear through a doorway. I swing my legs over the side of my bed and look at the
screen. My heart is beating fast and my face is aching. I can’t stop smiling. It’s like I’m unwrapping the biggest present I ever had. I can’t believe it’s happening.
I put my hand up to the side of my face and pull the microphone close to my mouth.

‘Amir, how did you do this?’

He laughs. ‘It’s easy, Joe. I connect laptop to camera and put camera on my head.’ He looks down and opens the buttons on his shirt. I see the hairs on his chest, below that
his laptop is strapped to his belly with black tape. He shows me the camera wire that comes out of a port on the laptop and tracks it up his body until it disappears into the hairs under his arm.
Then he closes the door, walks into the hall and stops by a mirror. I laugh. The camera shakes. Amir is laughing too. A camera is strapped to his head with a sweatband and above it is a picture of
me smiling.

‘Where did you get that?’ I ask.

Amir puts his finger to his lips. ‘Took it when you weren’t looking. Want my children to see what you look like. But don’t tell anyone.’

‘Amir,’ I say. ‘You know I’m good at keeping secrets.’

‘Yes, you are.’ He does the buttons up on his shirt. ‘Now what we do? Ah yes, I show you around.’

We turn into a room. A huge TV is on in the corner. The three children are climbing on top of each other in a pile on the settee. Amir taps one of them on the shoulder.

A little girl turns round. She’s got big round eyes and a gap between her teeth.

‘Say hello to Joe.’

Her smile grows wider and she waves at me. ‘Hello, Joe.’

‘Joe, this is Ajala.’

‘Hi, Ajala.’

She smiles and waves again. I lift up my hand.

‘Amir, can she see me?’

‘No,’ says Amir. ‘She just see picture, we connect camera for you next time.’

‘Great,’ I say.

Amir turns his head. Two boys jump in front of him. They both have dark hair and brown eyes. One has a mole on his cheek, the other is wearing glasses. Amir introduces me to his sons, Shukra and
Guru. They say hello and jump up and down again.

‘Do you want to watch TV with us?’ Shukra points.
Blue Peter
is on the TV.

‘No,’ says Amir. ‘Joe’s got his own TV; he watches it all the time. Let’s show him around the house instead.’

Shukra reaches up and holds Amir’s hand and they walk out of the room. Amir glances back. Ajala and Guru follow behind. They all walk into the dining room. There’s a big table in the
middle with six chairs. There are boxes piled high in the corner containing washing powder and disinfectant and smaller boxes of Mars Bars and Snickers. I ask Amir why he’s got so much stuff.
He tells me it was cheap to buy loads; it’s not usually in the dining room but he’s decorating the kitchen. He walks back through the hall and into the kitchen. Wallpaper hangs off the
walls. Abha is standing next to the oven with a saucepan of water boiling on top. The picture goes misty. Amir reaches up with a cloth and wipes the lens.

Abha picks up a wooden spoon.

‘I think we come back later,’ he says.

Abha smiles. ‘No, Amir. Come here.’ She walks towards the camera and puts her hand on Amir’s arm. ‘I think you need to calm down.’

‘We just having fun.’

Abha turns her head to one side. ‘I know,’ she says. ‘I’m just saying.’ She reaches up and strokes the side of Amir’s face and looks at him for a long
time.

‘I okay,’ whispers Amir.

Abha smiles. Amir leans forward and kisses her forehead.

‘Oops, sorry Joe, forgot you were there!’

Amir is so funny.

‘Now, where was I going? Ah yes. Upstairs.’

Abha laughs and tuts at him. Amir turns back into the hallway and starts to climb the stairs. There are pictures on the walls. Amir points to them as he walks.

‘This is my father, and this is my mother . . . and my grandfather and my grandmother, and this is all of us outside the Taj Mahal.’ He presses his finger against the picture and
tells me it was taken three years ago before his grandmother died. The camera stays still for a while, then Ajala tugs on his arm and says she wants to show me her room. She runs across a landing.
The floors are wood and the walls are painted purple. We go through a doorway into a room. Ajala is stood in the middle. She turns in a circle and points at her bed and her wardrobe, then at a red
rug on the floor that’s covered with dolls. She picks one up, tells me its name is Simba then she opens her wardrobe. It’s full of bright dresses and DVDs. She asks me if I want to
borrow any. I laugh.

‘I don’t think your dresses would fit me!’

‘I meant the DVDs, silly.’

Amir laughs and tells her I’ve got loads of DVDs already.

She holds up a blue pen. ‘Can he have this, then?’

Amir takes the pen, then he leads me out onto the landing and into another room where the walls are painted blue. Shukra and Guru are laughing as they bounce up and down on their beds.

The camera shakes from side to side.

‘Nothing much to see in here,’ says Amir. ‘Just a mess.’ He turns in a slow circle. I see Amir’s reflection in a window and posters of Transformers all over the
walls. Shukra picks up Ultra Magnus, fires his guns at the camera and then turns him into a truck. I tell him I used to have one. I don’t think he heard me.

‘Mad,’ says Amir. ‘They drive me mad.’ He turns and we go back onto the landing. Amir takes a deep breath, then another. The
Blue Peter
tune is playing downstairs.
Amir shows me a closed door and tells me it’s his bedroom and he shows me another door with ‘Bathroom’ written on a sign and a picture of bluebells underneath.

‘The bathroom,’ he says. ‘You want to see in there?’

‘It’s okay.’

‘Then that’s it,’ says Amir. ‘I show you everything, Joe!’ He walks along the landing and stops by a mirror at the top of the stairs. His hair is wet and his skin
is shiny. He wipes his forehead on his arm.

‘Oops, sorry.’

‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘I’m still here.’

‘So, you meet my family.’

‘I really like them, they’re nice. Not as mad as you!’

‘That’s good!’ Amir smiles so wide that it fills my room. I wait for him to say something, but he just looks down at his feet then back up to the mirror. When he’s here
with me he doesn’t stop talking but now it’s like he doesn’t know what to say, and after everything he’s shown me I don’t know what to say either.

Abha shouts something I don’t understand. The children push past Amir and run down the stairs.

‘Have to go,’ he says.

‘Okay.’

‘Did you enjoy it? Better than orangutans?’

‘Yeah! It was great. I like your family. I’d like to meet them for real one day.’

‘Maybe you will. Maybe you get a special suit like your friend.’

‘I don’t think so. I told you the ESA haven’t replied.’

‘The ESA? They no good, they fly a satellite all the way to Mars and crash into a mountain.’

I laugh.

‘It’s true. We find something else.’

‘I’m okay.’

‘What do you mean you’re okay? Don’t you want to go outside?’

‘Yes, but I like what you did.’

Amir smiles. ‘Me too,’ he says. ‘I think they all like you.’

Abha shouts again.

‘Coming!’Amir lifts his hands up to his head. ‘I’m sorry. Really have to go.’

He takes the camera off his head and the screens go blurred.

‘Amir?’

‘Yes?’

‘Thank you.’

‘That’s okay . . . Oh, Joe . . . I nearly forget.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t forget to watch Jim.’

‘Who?’

‘The night security guard.’

‘But, Amir. I’m tired.’

‘But you try? He worth it.’

‘Okay.’

‘Goodnight Joe.’

‘Goodnight.’

I press the remote and the screens come back on. Jim the security guard is sat reading a book in reception. He turns a page and takes a bite out of a sandwich. Another security guard walks
towards him and they talk for a while. Jim circles his finger in the air. The other security guard nods then walks down the corridor and gets in the lift. A minute later he appears on screen 9. He
walks up and down the corridors checking the doors, then gets back into the lift and does the same on the second floor. I look back at screen 1. Jim’s still reading and eating. On all the
other screens the corridors are quiet and empty, except for two porters talking outside the operating theatre door. I look back at screen 1. The reception is empty. Jim is walking down the corridor
with his book in his hand. He stops and pushes the toilet door open. I don’t know why Amir told me to watch him. He hasn’t done anything funny yet.

I yawn and rest my head on my pillow. My room is empty, dark and cold. I think of Amir and his family. For a while it was like they were all in here with me, laughing and talking. I close my
eyes. I imagine Amir sitting at the table. I can see Shukra, Ajala and Guru smiling with their knives and forks in their hands. Abha holds out her hand and tells me to pass her my plate. Ajala asks
me if she can get me some water. I nod. Abha passes my plate back. It’s piled high with chicken and potatoes. She smiles. ‘It’s nice to have you here, Joe.’

Amir picks up a glass and holds it in the air. ‘Friends,’ he says.

I nod. My headphones slip down onto my neck. I open my eyes. They’ve all disappeared like ghosts.

11 years, 3 months and 7 days

It’s 9 o’clock in the morning and the doctors have already been and gone. They think I’m getting better; my whites are back up over 3000 and my temperature is
going down. I feel better too. I can walk around the room without holding onto my bed and they’re letting me go to the toilet without a nurse having to wait outside. Dr Moore said he thinks
the worst is over. He smiled and ruffled my hair when he said that. Then he looked at my screens and shook his head.

‘Young man,’ he said. ‘You might be feeling better but I think you should give your eyes a rest.’

‘I will,’ I said. (I won’t.)

I’ve been watching the screens all week. First I watched all my favourite films one after the other. I watched Thor beat up Loki and throw him off a cliff; I watched Captain America, the
Falcon and Black Widow take down Hydra, and Greg came and sat with me to watch Spidey stop the Lizard. The next day I searched through all the channels but all I could find was the news from all
the countries in the world and talk shows with people shouting at each other in languages I couldn’t understand.

I’ve been watching the CCTV too. The men digging the road outside have passed the hospital doors and are on their way to Starbucks. It’s got so hot that they’ve bought in huge
floodlights so they can work at night. Two days ago a truck delivered three massive rolls of copper. Amir said it’s to increase the magnetic field so the alien ship can hover and not actually
touch the ground. He said it’s called Maglev. I looked it up on my laptop. It didn’t say anything about aliens or spaceships but there’s a railway being built with magnets to
propel trains in Japan.

The door clicks open. I pick up the remote.

Greg walks in and glances at the screens. A JCB jerks along the road, lowers its claw and digs at the ground.

‘Mate, come on, you’ve got to get dressed sometime.’ He puts clean clothes on the back of my chair.