Half an hour later I was still awake, my mind over heating with the events of the day.
I flicked on the bedside lamp. Picked up Northern Lightsand put it straight back down again. I sat up on the mattress, scrubbed my hair into a bird’s nest and thought seriously about knocking on Vee’s door. I swung my head round and spotted the sketchbook, at eye level, on the desktop next to my bed.
Anders had left it sitting there, right out in the open.
I reached up and grabbed it.
If he didn’t want anyone looking at his drawings, then he should have put them away.
I lay on my stomach and shone the beam of the reading lamp onto the cover. It bore nothing but a generic description: Sketchbook – 100 pages.
No name. No hint of the contents.
I opened the book to the last used page, the charcoal sketch that I had already seen, and tried to tell myself that it was less of an intrusion to sneak a second look at a picture I had already seen. I was kidding myself; once those pages lay open, I knew that no force on earth could stop me looking at every single drawing in the book.
Just like the first time, my eyes were sucked towards the tiny figure in the corner of the page.
Anders knew what he was doing. Every sweep and smudge of dark charcoal on that white page funnelled the gaze in one direction only.
The bleak desert landscape took up most of the page, but the meaning of the picture clearly lay in the figure of the departing child. It was as if all the life in the picture had withered and died in his wake.
I turned back to the previous page, careful not to smudge the dusty charcoal. It was completely different in every way. A pen and ink sketch of a baby looking over a mother’s shoulder, eyes wide and expressionless. As though looking into the face of a stranger.
The page before was different again: a water-colour of a rugged landscape, with a boy running away on the far side of a rocky chasm.
Page after page showed drawings, paintings, pastels, all different, yet oddly similar. All featuring a child of varying ages. Distant, alone, caught in the act of leaving, of turning, of running away.
A soft knock made me start.
I fumbled to close Anders’ sketchbook, but it was too late. Through a crack in the door I could see Manny’s scarred eye staring at me and at the book on the floor in front of me.
‘I didn’t want to wake you–’ He pushed the door open and stepped into the room. ‘I just wanted to make sure that you were OK before I went off to bed.’
He held out a big scarred paw and I handed him the sketchbook, blood pounding in my face.
‘He’s really good,’ I said defensively. ‘He should show these to people.’
Manny nodded. ‘He does, when they’re finished.’
I caught the note in his voice and hung my head, embarrassed about being caught snooping. ‘They look pretty finished to me,’ I muttered under my breath.
He perched on the edge of the desk, tapping the sketchbook against his leg. ‘They weren’t meant for anyone else’s eyes. Anders uses them as a way of thinking out loud, trying to work out what he wants to say through his art.’
I raised my head. ‘Did you know that his sketchbook is full of pictures of lonely kids?’
His tufted eyebrows rose in surprise. ‘No, I didn’t. But I do know that he draws what’s important to him.’ He took a breath, as though about to say something more, then changed his mind.
Instead he reached down and patted my arm. ‘If you’re interested, Henry, just ask him.’
‘He doesn’t talk to me, like you do. Like Caleb does.’
He studied the sketchbook propped against the broad expanse of his thigh. ‘Anders is a hard guy to get to know,’ he admitted. ‘But he’s worth the effort. Trust me on that.’
I hesitated. ‘I asked him how come he knew his way around the hospital. He said that he visited you when you were in there.’
‘ Visited–’ He coughed out a half laugh and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Is that what he called it?’
I shrugged and shifted uncomfortably. The truth was Anders hadn’t even said that much.
Manny sighed. ‘My story is what used to be called a “cautionary tale”. The type of story you tell kids to put them off doing something stupid. Something that might ruin their lives.’ He pointed. ‘And their faces.’
I held my breath. He was going to tell me where he got the scars. The ugly twisting gouges that clawed across his head and face and disappeared down the front of his ridiculous T-shirts.
He smiled a tight, sad little grimace.
‘I got hit by a car. My own stupid fault for being too lazy to cross at the lights. Got thrown more than ten metres into the front window of a shop. Smashed it along with practically every bone in my body. I even broke my neck. Luckily I didn’t sever my spinal column or I would have ended up in a wheelchair.’
I didn’t know what to say. Manny’s eyes were on the sketchbook in his hands.
‘When I woke up in the hospital, Anders was there by my bedside. He was there everytime I woke up. He read to me when I couldn’t hold a book or a newspaper. Brought in meals from Sirianni Fine Foods in The Valley so I wouldn’t have to eat the boiled mince the hospital dished up. Took my dirty PJs home with him every day, washed them and brought them back fresh next morning.’
I couldn’t help thinking of Mum and how she wouldn’t be able to get her PJs on over a broken leg. Maybe I could take her some big T-shirts to sleep in. ‘How long were you in hospital, Manny?’
‘Six months.’
The words were a kick in the guts. The air rushed out of me and I thought I was going to be sick. Manny dropped the sketchbook on the desk and reached out a steadying hand. ‘Henry, I broke practically every bone in my body, including my neck. It’s not the same for your mum, OK? She’ll be up and about on crutches before you know it. OK, matey?’
I forced myself to breathe and he patted my arm, not sure what to do next.
His story had hit a nerve. Now I couldn’t look at his broken face without thinking about what might have broken in Mum.
‘Manny, I’m really tired. I might just go to bed now, if that’s OK with you.’
He ran a hand through his shaggy hair. ‘Sure ... and don’t worry about your mum. She’ll be fine.’
I crawled under the cover, trying not to notice him going down awkwardly on one knee, trying to tuck me in.
‘Things will look brighter in the morning, matey. You’ll see.’
A final pat and he was gone.
I wanted to believe him, but the day had sucked a lot of the optimism out of me.
I turned my face towards the pillow. Muffling the hot damp fear that rose up inside me. Trying to ignore it squeezing its way out from between my closed lids.