The house still smells funny, like a damp bonfire.
We put up a real Christmas tree, and Liz has been spraying pine air freshener everywhere for weeks, but it hasn’t helped.
Everything still stinks of Eau de Jamie-Went-and-Burned-the-House-Down.
It’s late. I’m tired, but I can’t get to sleep.
I take my Transformers torch from my bedside table and switch it on. Elin doesn’t want it. She threw it back at me when I ruined her birthday party.
I open the book Paige gave me for Christmas and try to read it.
It’s a book about butterflies.
I know it is, cos there’s a big picture of a butterfly on the cover.
I can’t seem to focus on the words though.
I’m so tired.
My head is all mushy like it’s full of candy floss that someone’s dropped in a puddle.
I stretch out on my bed and flick through the photographs in the book slowly, letting my eyes go all unfocused like I’m about to fall asleep.
I can’t sleep though. Every night I lie awake and stare at the ceiling, waiting till it’s time to get up again.
My brain won’t switch off, but it won’t switch on properly either.
It’s like I’m a caterpillar that’s got stuck inside its chrysalis and can’t turn into a butterfly. My brain’s racing, telling me I have to break out, but my body’s tangled up in invisible threads.
It’s like a bad dream, but I’m wide awake.
I can hear the sound of a bedroom door slamming, and the house goes quiet again.
Dad and Liz have finally stopped arguing.
They started as soon as Dad got home from his shift tonight.
Dad’s upset because I’m not me any more, and Liz is upset because of something that happened at Elin’s gran’s house, but they’re both taking it out on each other.
I thought taking the medication would solve everything, but all it’s done is give Dad something else to worry about.
I’m not worried.
I’m too tired and too spaced out to feel much of anything at all.
The sound of footsteps in the hall stops outside my door. Dad must’ve seen the light from my Transformers torch.
“Are you awake, Jamie?”
He puts his head round the door, then when he sees me sitting up he comes in and switches on my bedside lamp.
“Still can’t sleep, huh?” He says something else, but by the time I peel my eyes slowly off the book and look up I’ve forgotten what it is, and he has to repeat it.
“Is it a good book?” Dad asks again.
“Yeah,” I shrug. It probably is. Paige gave it to me on the last day of term. It was wrapped in newspaper instead of Christmas paper, and the first page was torn out, so I think she stole it from the library and didn’t want me to see the label. But it’s the thought that counts.
I didn’t think to get her anything.
I can’t think of anything much at all any more.
Dad sits down on my bed, and I put my feet in his lap to keep them warm.
“Miss Morrison says your behaviour’s got much better in class,” Dad says, giving my feet a rub. My feet are the only bit of me I don’t mind being touched. They used to be tickly and it always made me laugh.
Tonight I hardly feel it.
Dad waits for me to say something back, but when I don’t he says, “She thinks you’re finally starting to settle in, but you’re not getting much work done. That’s why you’re getting so much homework even though you’re behaving better. Is everything OK, Jamie?”
Maybe Dad’s the one who needs medication. He’s getting forgetful. We’ve had this conversation three times already since he went to see Miss Morrison at the end of term.
“It’s fine,” I say. It’s not true, but it’s what Dad wants to hear, so I say it anyway.
“Are you feeling OK? You’ve been a bit… quiet since you started the medication.”
“I’m fine,” I lie again.
“You’d tell me if there was anything wrong though, wouldn’t you? You can stop taking the medication any time you want, you know that, right?”
“Yeah.”
I don’t have the energy to tell him the truth.
“Well, your teacher thinks if you could just concentrate a little more, you’ve got a great shot at winning a place at the science fair in May, isn’t that great?”
Dad picks up the school leaflet from the floor where I dropped it and tries to get me excited about it.
I know I should care. Science is my best thing. There’s a one-thousand-pound prize and everything.
I wish I could feel something.
I try to smile at Dad, but it comes out more like a shrug.
“It’s late, you should get some sleep. We’ll talk about it tomorrow, OK?” Dad frowns, but I’m not sure if he’s worried or disappointed.
“Goodnight son.” Dad tucks me back into bed and turns off the light again.
When I hear him in the bathroom, I turn my Transformers torch back on and pull Mum’s Christmas card out from under my pillow.
There’s lots of photos tucked inside, and I go through them slowly, putting the ones of Mum on her own on top of my quilt and dropping the ones that have Chris in them on the floor.
Mum’s written messages on the back of them, but my mind’s too fuzzy to read them right now. I know what they say though.
Mum says she loves me and she misses me and she hopes I have a wonderful Christmas with Dad in Scotland.
The one thing she doesn’t say is ‘I wish you were here’.
That’s what people are supposed to say on messages from abroad.
Unless of course they actually like living on a different continent and they’re glad to get away from you.
I put the photos of Mum inside the book Paige gave me for Christmas and slide it back under my pillow.
There’s a big lump there now, but it doesn’t matter.
I’m not going to sleep much tonight anyway.
I should probably stop taking the medication, but what’s the point? Everything would just go back to the way it was before.
Except now instead of being a monster who stomps and roars and makes everyone unhappy, I’m almost invisible.
Maybe if I keep taking the medication then one day soon I’ll disappear completely.
I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what Elin wanted for Christmas.