The Bubble Boy (16 page)

‘But I like it.’

‘I know, but do you have to watch this?’

‘No.’ I press screen 8.

Greg laughs. The picture changes to the hospital door. The woman on reception is outside talking to the security guard.

‘I think he’s going to ask her out,’ I say. ‘He walked her to the end of the road last night.’

‘Mate, Keith’s been walking Julie to the end of the road for months. He’s not going to ask her out. It’s just an excuse for him to have another cigarette.’

‘But he bought her a kebab!’

‘Ha, well she’s bound to say yes, then.’

On the screen, Keith says something I can’t hear. Julie laughs. I can’t hear that either but she’s still smiling when I switch to screen 3 and see her sit back down at her
desk.

Greg wasn’t supposed to know about the CCTV but one night I fell asleep and he came in and saw Jim reading his book. I thought my screens would be taken away but Greg says he won’t
tell anyone. I still have to turn the screens over if anyone else comes in. Amir is trying to find some sensors that will turn them off when my eyelids drop. His brother is working on it. He thinks
he can get me one of the eye sensors that soldiers use to fire guns on war-zone simulators.

I press channel 12. A laundry van arrives and reverses up to the back of the building. Two men get out and slide back two big doors.

‘Mate.’

I look up. Greg’s standing by the door.

‘I said, I’ll be back in to watch the football later, and don’t forget your documentary will be on.’

The two men load bags of dirty laundry into the back of the van. I think the young one has a girlfriend because he’s sat at the back of the van texting on his phone, or maybe he has a best
friend and sends him texts all the time. The older man throws a bag down and says something. The young one shakes his head and puts his phone in his pocket.

My laptop beeps. It’s Henry. He’s been quiet. His doctors and the people from NASA have been building up his energy levels and he’s been walking around in his room getting used
to his suit.

We turn our cameras on.

I see Henry smiling and hear the sound of people talking. Henry turns his laptop around. His mum and dad are standing by the door wearing white overalls. They wave at me and smile. Henry’s
mum’s got blonde hair like Henry and his dad is going bald. Henry says it’s because he worries about paying for the hospital treatment so much. Henry’s room and treatment
isn’t free like mine. To begin with his parents had some insurance but it wasn’t enough. So now his dad has to work away from home for months on an oil rig near Nova Scotia in Canada.
It’s a long way from Philadelphia – it takes five hours on a plane. His dad looks so tired that I think he might just have got off it. They smile and wave and I wave back. Then they
walk over to Henry, tell him they’ve missed him and they love him. Henry opens his arms, says he loves them too and they hug one another for a long time. It’s like they’ve
forgotten I’m here but I don’t care because if my mum and dad could come and visit me I would hug them for a long time too. Eventually they pull away.

‘Where’s Matt?’ I ask.

‘Don’t think he’s here, Joe,’ says Henry.

I hear someone giggling. Henry turns the camera towards the ground. His brother is crouched down at the end of his bed.

‘
Pow
!’ He points his fingers at me, pretending he’s got a gun in his hand.

I clutch my hand to my chest and fall back on my bed. ‘You got me,’ I say.

Henry laughs. ‘You can’t shoot, Joe. He’s a superhero. He can catch bullets between his fingers even if they travel at the speed of light.’

Me and Matt laugh.

I haven’t seen Henry’s brother for three months. He’s half Henry’s age and half as big, but his face is so chubby it almost fills the screen. I turn my laptop around.

‘Hey Matt, I’ve got something to show you.’

I flick the TV monitors on.

‘Wow, how did you get all of those?’

‘My nurse,’ I say. ‘He brought them in while I was sleeping.’

Matt’s face breaks into a grin. ‘It’s cool . . . Hey Mom, Joe’s got twelve TVs!’

Henry’s mum’s smiling face creeps in the edge of my screen. ‘That’s nice.’

‘Can I get more in my bedroom?’

‘No, Matt,’ she says. ‘I think one TV is enough.’

Matt sticks out his lip and I laugh. I wish I had a brother. I love Beth but it’d be great if I had a brother too. I wonder if he would look like me. We could play together in our back
garden and run down the road and buy sweets from the corner shop. We could eat them and then play pretend war on the way home. He could be The Goblin and I would chase after him as he zigzagged
across the road on his hover board and I’d catch him in my webs and we’d both nearly die laughing as we rolled on the ground. But Mum and Dad thought it was too risky to have another
kid, just in case it had the same disease as me. There was a fifty per cent chance that it would. I wish they had, though. Henry’s mum and dad were told the same too. Sometimes when he annoys
Henry, Henry tells me Matt was a mistake. I think he’s a good mistake.

The camera wobbles as Henry carries the laptop across the room and puts it down on a table. He sits down on a chair. His mum and dad sit down on the sofa. Henry’s dad leans forwards and
moves the screen.

‘That OK, Joe?’

The picture moves to the left. Matt’s sitting on the arm of the sofa, picking his nose. I laugh. They all look at the camera and smile. It’s like I’m sat in the middle of a
circle. I love it that when they come to visit Henry they come to visit me as well. Sometimes Henry talks to Beth when she visits. It’s good, but it’s not the same as if I had a bigger
family to share.

Henry’s mum is the first one to speak. She is wearing bright red lipstick and when she talks she looks around at everyone, just to check they’re listening.

‘I’ve got a new job,’ she says, ‘at a new accountancy firm that just opened in town. They seem good people, but I don’t know how I got it. I thought I was too old,
but I guess I make good coffee and can type 120 words a minute.’

‘Yeah, and unfortunately she talks that fast too,’ says Henry’s dad.

We all laugh. Henry’s mum tries to be quiet but it’s not long before she starts talking again. She tells us her car broke down last week out on the freeway, which is American for
motorway, but she didn’t mind too much because the tow-truck guy looked like Tom Cruise. Henry’s dad says he’s not sure we all want to hear that, but all she does is smile and
then start talking again about the tow-truck driver and then about a cat on her street that died after climbing into a tumble dryer. Eventually she stops and looks around the room.
‘Okay,’ she says. ‘I guess it’s someone else’s turn.’ She looks at Matt. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a piece of paper and holds it up to the
camera.

Things I did
.

He turns the list around and reads it out. ‘My boat got sunk in the lake. I lost my bike. I found ten dollars. I bought me a hamster. I fell over in the mall – did this
–’ He rolls up his trousers and shows us the scabs on his knees. ‘Went to cinema, got new Transformer, spoke to Dad on Skype, spoke to Henry on Skype, lost my hamster, late for
school, got lock for the cage, got new hamster, drew a T-Rex, packed stuff to go to see Henry and Joe. The end.’

His dad smiles and puts his arm around Matt’s shoulder. I wait for someone to ask Matt questions about his list, but they don’t and I think that they’ve already spoken to him
about it and the list was just written for me. I hear a door slide open. Henry’s mum walks in front of the camera, then comes back a few moments later and puts two cups of coffee down on the
table. She looks at Henry. He smiles at her then looks in my direction like he wants to say something but all he does is shrug. I do the same. It’s weird how we can talk to each other all
night and all day but can’t think of anything to say when other people are around.

Henry’s dad leans forward and picks up his cup of coffee. ‘Hey Joe,’ he says, ‘Henry says you might be going outside, too.’

‘Sorry, Joe. It just slipped out.’

‘Oops, sorry, Joe. Didn’t know it was a secret. This guy’s going to the mall.’ He puts his arm around Henry’s shoulders. ‘Where are you off to?’

I shrug. It seems silly to talk about where I’m going. Amir hasn’t told me anything; we haven’t got any plans. Henry knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s had a
timetable mapped out for months.

‘I don’t know. I could tell you where I go in my head, though.’

‘Yeah, Joe,’ says Henry. ‘Tell us one of your dreams, the superhero things. Start with the soccer guy.’

I smile and look up at Theo Walcott. I’d love to play football with him and after the game at Wembley he’d shake my hand and give me one of his shirts and show me around the dressing
rooms and I’d meet the rest of the team. On the screen, everyone is waiting for me to speak, but I feel nervous that I won’t say anything interesting.

‘My dream is to go into London and meet Beth at Covent Garden. She likes a café there, I don’t know the name, but she says it’s inside the market, by the clock.
I’d get Greg to text her, say he needs to talk to her about me. But he wouldn’t be there, it’d be me. I’d walk up behind her while she’s drinking coffee and reading
her book. I’d tap her on the shoulder and make her jump. Then she’d give me a massive hug.’

I stop talking. Henry’s mum smiles at me.

‘Go on, Joe. What happens next?’

‘I don’t know, but she always says she’d like to go on the London Eye.’

‘Do you know the route?’ She says it like ‘rowt’.

‘Sorry?’

‘The route . . . Do you know the way?’

‘Oh, yes, I’ve done it on Google Earth loads of times. It’s in my head.’

‘But don’t take the subway,’ says Henry. ‘You don’t want to go underground after being stuck in a room all your life.’ We all laugh.

‘Maybe you could all meet her,’ I say. ‘We could go to her house.’

‘Is it near your hospital?’

‘Not now, she’s gone to Edinburgh. It’s miles away.’

Henry’s mum rests her head against her husband’s shoulder. I wait for Henry or Matt to say something, but they all just sit there looking at me. I look down at the floor. I
didn’t get to go to Beth’s house before she moved. It was only two miles away. I’ve seen pictures of it when she’s there with her friends but that’s just pictures of
people sat on the sofa watching TV or drinking in the kitchen. If I visited her I wouldn’t want anyone else there. I’d just like to sit on the sofa by her side, eat dinner and watch TV.
But I can’t do that. It’s silly to think I could.