It’s quiet in the car. Dad doesn’t play the Tabernacle Choir CD and he doesn’t talk. When he pulls up outside the school, he switches off the engine and says, ‘I’ve learned something over the years, Jacob. The answer to some prayers is no.’
They walk up the path together. Jacob says goodbye and Dad says, ‘I’m tired,’ which feels like, ‘I’m sorry,’ even though the words are different.
He sits by himself in Early Drop-off Club. There’s no point in talking to anyone. Issy hasn’t come back, even though it’s All Souls’ Day.
He wanted to tell Dad a story in the car but he wasn’t brave enough. The story is true, at least that’s what Sister Anderson said. It’s about one of the apostles who kept rabbits when he was a little boy. One day, when the apostle was seven, his favourite rabbit escaped. He looked for the rabbit but he couldn’t find it. Then he said a prayer and immediately a picture came into his mind and he went to the exact spot he had imagined and found the rabbit. This showed the apostle that Heavenly Father responds to the small, simple prayers of everyone.
Jacob thinks about the rabbit story and what Dad said about answers to prayer in the car. There should be stories where the answer is no. There should be stories where children pray for lost rabbits that never turn up and then people might get used to it and know what to do next: he doesn’t know. He has prayed and blessed and waited, he’s done everything you have to do to get a miracle. If he can’t bring Issy back, the only way to see her again is to be good for his whole, entire life, which means he’s got to fix his lie.
It’s busy in the classroom. People are putting their lunch boxes on the trolley and chatting as they open their bags to retrieve reading books and spelling lists.
Mrs Slade hangs her coat and scarf over her chair. ‘What a chilly morning! Who can smell winter coming? Let’s get ready. Hurry up, everyone.’
Jacob opens his tray. The Box of the Dead is just Issy’s glasses case now. There’s nothing special or magical about it. He picks it up and peeps inside. The dead things are getting smaller. Their legs are folded tighter. Perhaps they would disappear altogether if he just left them there. But he can’t. He told a lie and he has to repent. He carries the case over to his table and sits down. He feels a bit sick. He knows Mrs Slade likes him, he can tell by the way she says his name; it sounds like Jay-cub, and her voice goes up and down just like it does when she says the word love-ly. But she won’t like him once she finds out he’s a liar.
‘Why’ve you got that out?’
Jacob ignores George. In just a moment Mrs Slade will write three sums on the board and there’ll be five minutes to answer them before the bell goes for assembly. As soon as everyone is working on their sums he will go over to her desk and explain.
George pokes him in the leg. ‘What’re you doing?’
‘Get off.’
‘Give us a look in there.’
‘No.’
‘Go on.’ George slides his hand across the table, wraps it around one end of the glasses case and yanks.
‘Get. Off.’
‘Make me.’
Jacob stands, George follows, and they’re suddenly doing tug-of-war in front of everyone while Mrs Slade writes sums on the board. A few people start giggling and Mrs Slade turns round.
‘Sit down please, boys.’
Jacob slides a nail into the lip of the glasses case to get a stronger grip. George pulls harder, and then the case flicks open and a litter of insect skeletons flies to its final resting place beside Jessie Sinkinson.
Mrs Slade runs. She glances at the insects on the table and bends down to lift the big, umbrella-shaped spider off Jessie’s lap. She puts it with the other dead creatures and that’s when Jessie starts to scream, her mouth so wide that Jacob can see the dangly bit at the back of her throat.
The screams jab fright into his tummy, they remind him of Mum howling at Issy’s funeral, of the coffin sliding into the earth and mud splatting onto its white lid, and of every other sad and disappointing thing that has happened since. He sits down, clutching the open case. Another teacher rushes into the room and tells everyone to stop staring and line up for assembly while Mrs Slade kneels on the floor next to Jessie and says, ‘Shush, shush.’
Every time Jessie pauses to take a breath, George hisses, ‘I knew Jacob Bradley kept dead things in his tray. I told the truth.’
‘Go to assembly with the others, George. And, Jacob, please don’t cry. It was just an accident.’
There are splashes on the table. Jacob rubs them with his finger. Jessie’s voice is loud and strong like a burglar alarm and it seems even louder as the classroom empties and there’s more air to fill.
‘Shush, shush.’ Mrs Slade slides her hand across the table and brushes the insects away from Jessie and onto the floor. ‘Jacob, there’s no need for you to cry,’ she says.
He can’t stop the tears, it’s like someone’s switched a tap on in his eyes. ‘Issy’s never coming back, my mum won’t get up and there’s no such thing as Father Christmas.’
George pokes him in the shoulder. ‘You’re a liar, Jacob Bradley, a big, fat liar.’
‘George, go to assembly. Now.’
‘Pants. On. Fire.’
‘Now.’
George hurries away. He’ll be in trouble later and that should make Jacob feel better but he just feels tired and old, as if he has been awake for his whole life.
‘Why don’t you go and wait in the corridor, until Jessie calms down?’ Mrs Slade says.
He does as he’s told and waits by the door to the classroom, beside the display of Egyptian pictures and drawings. He realises that all the tears he could have cried but didn’t because he was busy bringing Issy back to life haven’t gone anywhere, they’re still inside him. He tries to swallow them but it’s hard and in the end he thinks ‘better out than in’, which is what Mum used to say when someone did a burp. Thinking of her makes more tears come and he watches them splash on the corridor floor.
Once Jessie’s screams have settled into an unhappy sort of hum, Mrs Slade comes out and puts her arm around his shoulder.
‘What are we going to do with you, Jacob Bradley?’
She makes him sit on a chair in the corridor, outside the toilets, right where you have to wait to be picked up if you’ve been sick. Then she goes to the office to telephone Dad’s school. It smells of wee and disinfectant by the toilets, and when people walk past on their way back from assembly, they leave lots of space because they don’t want to catch sick germs. But he hasn’t been sick, he’s been sad which is actually much worse.
His eyes are sore and he feels all crackly and dry inside, like a packet of crisps. He wonders when he will be allowed to come back to school – you have to wait twenty-four hours if you’ve been sick. If he has to wait until he is completely happy again, he might be off for quite a while. He clasps Issy’s glasses case in both hands, rests his head against the corridor wall and as he closes his eyes it occurs to him that all this – the Box of the Dead and George and Jessie and the insects – is an answer to prayer.