And the Stars Were Burning Brightly

Jackson Pollock hid his signature in one of his paintings once. A historian’s wife found it, but she could only make out three letters at first: S O N. Then she realized that JACKSON ran across the entire top and below that was POLLOCK. Sometimes paintings have hidden meanings. And sometimes artists want to say something, but can’t, so they hide it behind patterns, or swirls, or dark patches. But it’s there if you look hard enough.

Hiding in plain sight.

Whoever this Sophie was, Al must have been friends with her, so Facebook seems like a good place to start looking for her. I go to his friends list, then click on the search box, typing the name Sophie, but no one comes up. I scroll through his pictures, looking at all the likes and comments, trying to see if Sophie had written something, or liked one of his photos, but there’s nothin.

I go to the memorial page. There’s even more comments than before and 1,200 likes now. Plus, loads of posts about how sad it is, or how Al was such a great guy. I don’t wanna look, but I can’t help it. I scroll through, reading all the posts that have been put up.

I’m so sorry

RIP

Such a shame

Selfish ppl. Killing themselves 4 attention. U cnt luv ur family that much if u’d do that.

It’s been liked three times, and has two laughing faces and one love. Someone else has commented:

I’d kill myself 2 if I had lips like that. lol.

U shouldn’t make fun of ppl who’ve killed themselves that’s sick.

No, killing urself for attention is sick.

Why u commenting on this page if u don’t know him?

It’s just selfish.

Call urself a Christian wen u take ur own life.

He cnt have loved his family that much, if he went and killed himself.

Selfish

He must have been so messed up.

He must have had a screw loose.

People do anything 4 attention.

Shut up.

Why don’t u fuck off and kill urself 2? Lol. It’s not like any1 will miss u . . . I’ll gladly send u the rope . . .

When ur so ugly, even God’s pissed that he’ll have 2 look at u

Al’s features have been stretched out and changed, even tho you can still tell it’s him. The picture has got over 900 likes, laughing faces and wows. I look more closely at the screenshot. Someone’s tagged Jeremiah in the comments with:

Lol. Jeremiah, man, ur savage!!

I want to punch through the screen to tear down all the likes and posts. Tell them that Al wasn’t selfish – he didn’t do none of this for attention and he wasn’t messed up. He was my brother, my big brother, not some sort of stupid joke. He’d killed himself and now this page – his page – was turning into somewhere that people could take the piss. I click on Messenger and type in Megan’s name. This is her fault. If she hadn’t bothered to stick her nose in and set up the page, then people wouldn’t be saying all this stuff about my brother. I type:

I’d always thought it was funny looking at the comments that other people had put, rating girls on their Insta and that, stealing their pictures and sending them to Kyle, or watching videos of kids fighting, and laughing about it all. Everyone does it. But I guess it’s funny when it’s someone else. When it ain’t your brother.

I hear a key turn in the front door, and then the sound of Saul’s footsteps downstairs. I grab Al’s drawing out my rucksack and shove it in my hoodie pocket before heading downstairs. I walk into the kitchen just as Saul is unwrapping soggy packages of white chip paper on to some plates. Phoebe’s there, too.

The police ain’t there. I didn’t even hear them leave. The place where my mum was sitting is empty, too. Saul grabs some juice out the fridge.

He nods. ‘I’ll go and get Mum,’ he says, and then he disappears towards the living room.

Phoebe must be feeling better cause she puts some chips inside a buttered piece of bread, then folds it in half and tries to shove the entire thing in her mouth.

I sit down and try to eat some chips. Like everything is normal. Like I never read any of those comments or heard the police tryna make out that Al was a drug dealer or summat.

‘She said she ain’t hungry,’ Saul says as he comes back into the kitchen. He sits down and reaches for a pot of gravy, pouring it over his food. ‘We’ll save her some, just in case she changes her mind.’

I nod. I’m still angry, but I don’t wanna tell him why. Not in front of Phoebe.

‘Saul,’ Phoebe says. ‘I’ve made a den. Nate says you won’t fit in it, though, cos you’ve got a big meat head.’ She laughs.

‘Like you can talk,’ Saul replies. ‘Your head’s bigger than mine, mate, and you’ve got the weird ears to go with it.’

She pauses and stares down at her plate. ‘It’s got some of Al’s drawings in there,’ she says. ‘It makes me feel like he’s still here.’

Saul swallows hard. ‘He is,’ he tells her. ‘Al’ll always be with us in some way.’ He moves closer to Phoebe. ‘Just cause he ain’t around don’t mean you can’t talk to him.’ He looks at me. ‘He’d wanna know we’re all okay.’

Phoebe nods and carries on eating, but I can’t move. I can’t even speak cause we’re not okay. We never will be. Phoebe starts going on about some school play that she’s in, but I can’t concentrate. All I can do is go over wot Al’s drawing meant and how Lewi had hurt him, and who Sophie is. The same questions running over and over in my head. Finally, Phoebe finishes her chips and Saul clears her plate away.

Phoebe nods and leaves the kitchen and I turn to Saul. ‘Police were here earlier,’ I say.

He pauses, then dumps the plates in the sink. ‘What?’ he says. ‘What did they want?’

‘They wanted to talk to Mum about Al. I heard them tryna say that he’d been selling. Asking her if he was involved in stuff and that’s why he . . .’

‘They’re fucking unbelievable,’ Saul says. He sits back down and the vein at the side of his head starts to throb. ‘There’s always gotta be something. Drugs, gangs. He can’t just be a normal lad who got a stupid idea in his head.’

He leans back in his chair. Saul always gets mad about stuff to do with the police cause they’re always on his case. Trying to accuse him of summat or other. He’s got a few dodgy mates, but he stays outta trouble and I know it’s cause he wouldn’t be able to look after us if he was inside.

‘Wish I’d been here,’ Saul says. ‘Inquest or no inquest, I’d have told ’em where to go.’

I pull the drawing out my pocket. I dunno why I’m doing this now, why I’m showing Saul. Maybe it’s cause part of me feels like I’m going round in circles with it and thinks he might be able to help. And I dunno wot else to do.

‘I’ve been looking into some stuff,’ I tell him. ‘I found this picture and Lewi wrote this weird comment on Facebook. Then there’s some girl called Sophie that I think Al might have been hanging around with. Did he ever mention—’

‘Stop!’ Saul shouts. It’s so loud that it makes me jump. ‘Will you just stop all this! What you even going on about?’

‘It’s just a drawing, Nate,’ he says. ‘Why do you think this even means anything?’

I can’t tell him that I want it to mean summat. That I’m desperate for it to mean summat . . .

‘It was in Al’s room,’ I say. ‘That day. I found it on the floor. It says help me. Wot if he was tryna tell us summat? That he was in some sort of trouble?’

Saul tosses the drawing down on the kitchen table. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he says. ‘You’re looking for stuff that ain’t there. People kill themselves all the time and there ain’t always a reason. This is just a picture. Al’s room was full of drawings like this – it don’t mean anything.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘It don’t make sense! Al was going to uni. He was going to have everything he wanted. Why would he just decide to do it? To leave us—’

‘Enough!’ Saul says. He puts his head in his hands. ‘D’you not think it’s hard enough without you going on all the time?’ He pauses. ‘Mum’s started drinking again, I’m only just getting Phoebe to sleep in her own bed and you wanna go on about some picture.’ He shakes his head. ‘I know that it’s hard to believe cause it’s Al. But you don’t always know everything about a person, Nate.’ He pauses. ‘You gotta stop,’ he says, his voice softer now. ‘There ain’t one reason that makes people decide they’ve had enough. Sometimes there’s loads. Loads of things that pile up and then something tiny can just push you. You’re gonna drive yourself mad trying to figure this out. You’re looking for something that ain’t there.’

‘Well, wot am I supposed to do?’ I snap. ‘Walk around not giving a toss? Carry on like you, pretending everything’s fine?’

‘Stop acting like a little kid,’ he says and I can see how angry he is. ‘You think there’s only one way to show that you’re grieving? Have you not thought that keeping it all together, trying to look after everyone, is the only thing that’s making me feel normal? It don’t mean that I don’t feel it, too.’ Saul steps away from me. ‘This ain’t some detective story, or one of them murder-mystery shows. Life ain’t like that. People don’t go leaving clues in a drawing. If Al wanted to tell us something, why didn’t he just leave a note? Just stop, Nate, yeah? Al’s gone and you’re not gonna bring him back with all this crap.’

He shakes his head and walks out the kitchen. I swallow hard. Al didn’t leave a note, but he did try to call me. He did try to tell me summat. I don’t care wot Saul says, I know that stuff happened, that there’s more going on . . . Al would always tell me how important his drawings were. How they helped him speak when he couldn’t find words. Al had secrets and his picture was gonna help me find out wot he was hiding.

I close my bedroom door and look round at the wallpaper peeling near the top, the clothes shoved on top of my chest of drawers, all the trainers covering the floor. I look up at the stars on my ceiling and hear Al’s voice in my head: ‘Nate, come on. It’s going to be okay.’

I pick up his sketchbook and it makes me proper angry cause I can’t believe he’d do this without trying harder to talk to me . . . How was I supposed to know wot would happen if I didn’t pick up the phone? I tear at the drawings in the pad, pulling them out one by one and ripping them down the middle. Why couldn’t he just speak to me? I carry on tearing up his drawings till the paper piles up on the floor. Maybe all them comments were right. Al was selfish, or he wasn’t right in the head.

I’ve reached the cardboard part of the sketchbook now, the bit that holds it all together with a thin black spine. I throw it down on the floor and notice a drawing that I must have missed when I’d been flicking through the pages before. It’s Al sitting on a hill with his arm round some girl, looking up at the sky. The girl has a long plait, which reaches the bottom of her back, and, even tho it’s much smaller, every last detail is exactly the same. It’s Sophie. But this time Al’s scribbled: Al and Star Girl.