Dear Mr. Harris,
The best thing about this shed is definitely the lack of eyes. No eyes at all apart from eight on the spider, and they’re not looking at me. The spider’s in the web on the windowsill, staring through the glass at the silhouette of the tree and the cloud and the half-moon, silver reflected in her eyes as she thinks about flies or whatever.
It’ll be different tomorrow. The eyes will be back. Sad ones and inquisitive ones and some that stare and others that try not to look but keep on glancing as I walk into school to start the new term. There’ll be nowhere to hide, not even the toilets if that’s what you’re thinking, because last term some girls waited for me to come out of a stall then pounced on me, wanting to know everything—what and when and where and how but not who, because they’d all been to his funeral.
Questions questions questions questions getting louder and louder just like that and I didn’t know what to say. My back started to sweat, a hot white bone burning from my bum to my brain. I turned on the tap as far as it would go. Water gushed over my hands trying to wash away the guilt. I started to scrub harder and harder as my breath came quicker and quicker and the girls moved closer and closer, and I couldn’t stand it for a second longer so I ran for it. Barging through the door, I collided with my English teacher, who took one look at my face and ushered me into her office.
On the wall there was a picture of Lady Macbeth above the quote “Out, damned spot,” and Mr. Harris I don’t know if you’re familiar with Shakespeare but in case you’re wondering, Lady Macbeth wasn’t banging on about a pimple on her chin. I stared at Lady Macbeth’s bloody hands as my own shook violently. Mrs. Macklin cooed, “There there don’t worry there’s no rush take as long as you need,” and I wondered if she actually meant it, if it would be okay for me to sit at her desk next to her pile of marking till the end of time. I couldn’t stand her being nice, patting my arm and telling me to breathe, saying I was doing so well and I was so brave and that she was so sorry, for all the world as if it were her fault, not mine, that his body is in a coffin.
That’s the hardest thing of all—the knowledge that he’s under the ground. With his eyes wide open. Brown eyes that I know so well, staring up at the world they can no longer reach. His mouth’s open, too, like he’s screaming the truth but no one can hear. Sometimes I even see his fingernails, bleeding and torn because he’s been scratching words into the coffin lid, this long explanation of what happened on May 1, buried six feet under so no one will ever read it.
But maybe these letters are helping Mr. Harris. Maybe as I get more and more of the story to you, more and more of the story will disappear from the coffin until it’s all gone for good. His fingernails will heal and he’ll cross his hands on his chest and close his eyes at long last, and then the maggots will come to eat his flesh but it will be a relief and his skeleton will smile.
That’s a reassuring thought but I suppose I’d better get back to telling you what happened last year after Mum and Dad had the argument about Grandpa. From what I can remember, they were trying to act normal after their fight but there was tension I could have cut with my knife, which probably would have been easier than slicing through the steak on my plate. Mum never normally made a mess of the food but that night everything was overcooked. I hope I don’t sound ungrateful Mr. Harris. I mean, you must be sick of prison meals, which I imagine to be some sort of gruel as seen in the musical Oliver! Maybe the guards eat pizza right in front of your cell, so close you can smell it, and it’s all you can do not to start singing “Food, Glorious Food” in a cockney accent.
If it’s any consolation, the food Mum cooked that night wasn’t the slightest bit glorious and we gave up on the steak after five minutes.
“Why haven’t I met Grandpa before?” Dot signed suddenly.
Dad picked up his wineglass but didn’t take a sip.
“You have, my love,” Mum signed. “You just don’t remember.”
“Did I like him?”
“You… well, you were too young to have an opinion,” Mum replied.
“Is he going to be okay?”
“We hope so. He’s very ill, though.”
“Will he be okay tomorrow? Or the next day? Or the day after that?”
“Stop asking stupid questions,” Soph muttered. Dot stared at her blankly because she struggles to lip-read. “Stop asking stupid questions,” Soph said again, moving her lips even faster on purpose.
“Sophie,” Mum warned.
“Grandpa’s going to be fine, pet,” Dad signed, his hands slow and clumsy. “He’s in the hospital but he’s stable.”
Mum put her arm around Dot’s shoulders and nuzzled the top of her head. “Don’t worry.”
“I’m worried, too,” Soph announced suddenly. “Like what if he dies or something.”
Dad sighed. “Don’t be dramatic.”
I glanced at the grandfather clock. Forty-five minutes until the party started. I started to whistle. I never normally whistled. Mum watched me suspiciously as I took my plates to the sink, my bare feet cold against the tiles.
“Where’re you going?” she asked.
I didn’t dare look at her. “To get ready.”
“For what?”
Dropping my knife and fork into the water, I stared at the bubbles. “The party at Max’s house.”
“What party? What party, Zoe?”
I spun around. “Dad said I could go!”
Mum glared at Dad as he dipped his finger into some ketchup on his plate and licked it clean. “Well, she’s been good all day.” It was more than I could have hoped for. I had to fight the urge to run over and kiss him.
“Were you going to mention it to me, Simon?”
“I don’t have to run every decision by you.”
“Oh, so this is how it’s going to be from now on, is it?” Mum flared up. “You making decisions—ridiculous decisions—that affect the whole family, without considering—”
Dad’s cheeks flushed. “Don’t start all that again, Jane. Not in front of the girls.”
Mum exhaled noisily, but she dropped the subject. I moved to the kitchen door as Dot picked up a green bean and threw it back onto her plate in the manner of a javelin.
“Gold at the Olympics!” she signed. “And gold in the shot put!” She chucked a carrot. It bounced off Soph’s elbow and landed next to the salt pot.
“Mum, will you tell her?” Soph moaned.
“Stop it, girls,” Dad snapped.
“Why are you having a go at me?” she exploded.
“Leave it, Soph,” Mum said.
“This is so unfair!” she cried, flinging a hand into the air and accidentally hitting a glass. It flew across the table, black currant juice spilling everywhere. Dad swore as Mum leaped up to grab a tea towel.
“So can I go, then?” I asked.
“No!” Mum said.
“Yes!” Dad said at the same time.
They glowered at each other as black currant dripped onto the floor.
“Fine!” Mum snapped. “But I’m picking you up at eleven.”
Before Mum could change her mind, I charged out of the kitchen and raced up the stairs two at a time, bursting into my bedroom. It was tidy, of course, because Mum made me keep it that way, my clothes hanging neatly in my closet and my purple duvet completely straight. My lamp stood in the exact middle of my bedside table, and on the shelf above my headboard, my books were stacked so all the titles faced the same way. Only my desk was messy, pages of Bizzle the Bazzlebog spread all over it, Post-it notes stuck to my bulletin board with details of characters and plot twists scribbled in pen.
I got ready quicker than ever in my life, pulling on a pair of black jeans and a top. Really I should have washed my hair but Mr. Harris there wasn’t time so I tied it back in a messy ponytail, then put on a pair of earrings, nothing fancy or girly, just plain silver hoops. Before I ran out of my bedroom, I slipped on a pair of flat shoes, then hopped into Dad’s car.
We heard the house before we saw it, all this music, heavy beats throbbing in the air. Dad pulled up near a row of terraces. They were small and simple, pretty much how Dot would draw a house if I gave her a crayon and a piece of paper. Two windows at the top. Two at the bottom. A front door in the middle and a long, thin garden with one tree next to a straight path half covered in grass.
Balloons in the shape of beer bottles bobbed about in the distance, silver strings tied to the gate at the very end of the row. I climbed out of the car, my face probably pink and my mouth definitely dry, because I remember struggling to swallow without any spit.
“Be good, eh?” Dad said, catching sight of the balloons. “I could do without any more drama today.”
He sounded so fed up, I stuck my head back through the door. “You okay?”
A yawn. A flash of fillings. “I’ll be fine.”
“Grandpa’s going to get better, you know.”
Dad gazed out of the window without seeing the group of girls stumbling past in dresses and high heels. Four inches, they must have been, and I suddenly wondered if I looked ridiculous in my flat shoes and jeans.
“He just seemed so… oh, I don’t know. Old, I suppose.”
I stared down at my feet, trying to imagine them from someone else’s perspective. “He is old, Dad.”
“He used to run marathons.”
I looked up, surprised. “Really?”
“Oh yeah. He was fit. He did it in just over three hours once.”
“Is that good?”
Dad smiled, but it was sad. “It’s more than good, pet. And he could dance. Gran, too. They were quite something.”
The music in the house got louder. Dad was far away in his thoughts but the party was right there in front of me, and I didn’t want to be rude but time was ticking ticking ticking. When enough seconds had passed, I leaned into the car and pecked him on the cheek before setting off, wondering what music Grandpa had liked and how he had looked, dancing with a body as young as mine.
Just because I could, just because I wasn’t stiff or frail or stuck in the hospital after a stroke, I sped up, grateful for my working limbs and moving joints and the fact that I wasn’t old. By the time I reached the end terrace, my pulse was racing. The front door was open, people making their way inside. I paused by the gate, batting the balloons to one side, taking it all in, and honest truth, it looked like a whole new world and not just a hall with an old blue carpet. My stomach fluttered and my adrenaline tingled and I felt young Mr. Harris, really young in this precious sort of way. I savored the moment, then hurried up the path, avoiding the cracks between the slabs.
“Stepping-stones over a fast river? Or hurdles in the Olympics?”
A boy I didn’t recognize was sitting on a bench in the front garden. Brown eyes. Messy blond hair that looked as if it had never been brushed. Tall enough. Lean. “What were you imagining?” he called over the music, pointing at the cracks.
I shrugged. “Nothing. I’m superstitious, that’s all. If you tread on the cracks it’s bad luck, isn’t it?”
The boy looked away. “Disappointing.”
“Disappointing?”
“I thought you were playing a game.”
“I can play a game if you want me to play a game,” I replied. My voice surprised me. Confident. Flirtatious, even. A brand-new sound.
The boy looked back, interested now. “Okay. Here’s a question. If the cracks were something dangerous, what would they be?”
I thought for a moment as three girls tottered into the party, smirking at my outfit. “Mousetraps,” I replied, trying to ignore them.
“Mousetraps? You can have any fantasy in the whole world, and you choose mousetraps?”
“Yeah, well…”
“Not alligators or deep black holes with snakes at the bottom. Tiny little mousetraps with bits of cheddar stuck on the snappy thing.”
I took a step closer, then another, enjoying myself immensely. “Who said they’re tiny mousetraps?” I prodded the cracks with the end of my shoe. “Maybe they’re huge ones with poisonous cheese and spikes that can rip my toes to shreds.”
“Are they?”
I hesitated. Then smiled. “No. They’re tiny little mousetraps with bits of cheddar stuck on the snappy thing.”
Above our heads, something flew into a tree and hooted.
“Owl!” I exclaimed.
The boy shook his head. “There you go again.”
Sighing, he stood up. His shoulders were wide as if they could carry the weight of the whole world or at least give me a good piggyback. He was wearing faded blue jeans and a black T-shirt that bagged in all the wrong places. He’d made even less effort than me. All of a sudden my flat shoes seemed to float four inches off the ground.
“Can you see the bird?” he asked, putting his hand over his eyes and gazing into the leaves.
“Well, no, but—”
“So how do you know it’s an owl? It could have been a ghost.”
“It’s not a ghost.”
The boy walked toward me and my breath caught in my throat. “But how do you know? It could have been a spirit that—”
“I know it’s an owl because of the hoot,” I interrupted. The bird did it again, right on cue. I held up my finger. “Hear that? That’s the cry of the little owl. The mating cry, actually.”
The boy raised an eyebrow. I’d surprised him.
“The mating cry, huh?” His eyes twinkled and I felt triumphant. “Tell me more about this amorous little owl.”
“Well, it’s one of the most common species in Britain. And it has feathers. Obviously,” I said, feeling self-conscious. “But they’re beautiful, sort of speckled, brown and white. It’s got a big head, long legs, yellowish eyes,” I went on, warming to my theme, “and this bounding, undulating sort of fly, similar to a woodpecker, really, and…”
The boy started to laugh. Then I started to laugh. And then the owl hooted as if it was starting to laugh.
“What’s your name?” he asked, and I was just about to reply when the gate creaked and heels tapped up the path.
“Bloody hell, you actually came!” Lauren shrieked. “Let’s get a drink!” Before I could protest, she grabbed my hand and tugged me toward the house, stumbling on a crack.
“Mind the alligators,” I said. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the boy grin.
Lauren stopped, looking confused. “What?”
“Doesn’t matter,” I muttered, and then I grinned, too.
The living room was small with a faded red carpet and a beige sofa pushed to one side to make room for dancing. Lauren threw off her coat and joined in, all Wooooo and waving her arms in the air. She twirled in the middle of the room as I grabbed a glass off the drinks table and poured myself some lemonade. And then, after a pause, some vodka. I mixed it with my finger, music pounding in my ears and my blood and every single one of my organs. La la la la la, my heart sang, just like that. I downed my drink in one as people gyrated between the sofa and the mantelpiece as if they were in a nightclub rather than a living room, and honest truth they looked ridiculous, grinding against each other on the rug.
And then all of a sudden there he was, leaning against the door frame, amused by the scene. He caught my eye or maybe I caught his, or possibly they caught each other at the exact same moment. As everyone danced, he shook his head and I rolled my eyes, and we both knew exactly what the other was thinking, like imagine our heads connected by a telephone wire. The boy didn’t move toward me and I didn’t move toward him, but that cable between our brains buzzzzzzed.
Someone with ginger hair got in the way, but the boy kept glancing at me and glancing at me as if I was worth a second and a third and a one-hundredth look. My body felt different under his gaze. Not just arms and legs and bones. Skin and lips and curves. I poured myself another drink as the boy chatted to his friend. My hands were unsteady. Lots of vodka went in my glass but lots splashed on the table. Cursing, I grabbed a napkin, and by the time I’d cleaned it up, the boy had disappeared. Just like that. One second he was by the door, and the next he wasn’t, and my heart stopped dead with a big fat Oh.
I told Lauren I was going to the bathroom and took off at once, squeezing past bodies and ducking under arms into the hall. He wasn’t outside or in the kitchen or in the cupboard full of coats. Pushing past people on the narrow stairs, I swigged my drink, opening three doors to find nothing but empty rooms. I tried the upstairs bathroom. The downstairs, too, filling my glass on the way there, just neat vodka this time, and I swallowed it in one go as I tried the handle.
It turned easily to reveal a dripping tap and a toilet, and I gazed at my frowning face in the mirror, my reflection swimming in and out of my vision as I gripped the edges of the sink. I steadied myself, then stumbled into a tiny sunroom. It was big and cool and dark, just the moon shining through the glass ceiling. In the far corner was a comfy-looking chair and I fell into it as the room started to spin. As my bum touched the cushion, a voice said, “Hey.”
My head jerked up, but it wasn’t the boy, Mr. Harris. It was Max Morgan. The Max Morgan. And he was grinning at me, a bottle of whiskey in his hand. Drink was splashed down his smart shirt and his forehead was shiny with sweat, but his eyes were brown, really brown, and his short hair was dark and styled, and his grin was crooked in a way that sent me all off-kilter.
“Hey,” Max said again. “Hannah?”
“Zoe,” I replied. Except of course I didn’t. I used my real name, the one I can’t tell you.
“Zoe,” Max repeated. “Zoe Zoe Zoe.” He burped behind closed lips then let it out slowly. He pointed at my chest suddenly. “You’re in my French class!”
“No.”
Max held up his hands and almost fell over. “Sorry. Sorry sorry. You just look like someone I know.”
“We’ve been at the same school for three years.”
Max completely missed my tone. “Is it me or is it really hot in here?” He stumbled toward the sunroom door and tried to open it. “This is broken. Hannah, it’s broken.”
I climbed to my feet and turned the key. “It’s Zoe, and it’s fixed.”
Max hiccupped. “My hero. Heroine. Like the drug.” He pretended to put a syringe in his arm then laughed at his own joke, holding out the bottle. “Drink?” I made to grab it, but Max jerked the bottle out of my reach then stepped outside. “You coming?”
The night was warm, perfect for sitting in. A breeze lifted my hair as Max took my hand. My stomach flipped over as our fingers interlinked and I wondered what Lauren would say if she could see Max Morgan’s thumb rubbing one of my knuckles. I thought about telling the story on Monday morning. And then Max led me to a stone fountain at the bottom of the back garden. A moth was floating in the water. Max touched it gently with the very tip of his finger before lowering himself onto the grass. Swigging the whiskey, he looked up at me and I looked down at him, and we both knew that something incredible was about to—
Max belched.
“You just going to stand there or what?”
I sat down as he handed me the bottle. One more sip couldn’t hurt. That’s what I told myself. That’s what I told myself every single time Max held out the bottle, the rim shining in the moonlight, wet with spit. He put his hand on my leg, and I didn’t stop it, not even when it crept up my thigh. At some point I started talking about Grandpa, and how he was ill, and how he’d been in shape when he was young.
“I’m in shape,” Max said, and then he hiccupped.
“They were quite something, my grandparents,” I added, and I remember having to work really hard to stop my words from slurring.
“My parents were, too. Before. Not now. They don’t even speak anymore.”
“They were also really good at dancing,” I went on, weaving my hands together to show what I meant.
“I’m good at dancing,” Max said, nodding too hard, his head going up and down in the darkness. “Really good.”
“Yeah, you are,” I replied solemnly, though I had absolutely no idea. “And my grandparents were young once. Young. Don’t you think that’s weird?”
Max hiccupped again and tried to focus on my face. “We’re young. We’re young right now.”
“True,” I said. “Very true.” It was the wisest conversation anyone had ever had and I smiled wisely because of my great wisdom and also possibly because of the whiskey. Max leaned in close, his nose brushing against my cheek.
“You’re nice, Zoe,” he said, and because he got my name right, I kissed him on the lips.
Now, Mr. Harris, you’re probably shifting about on your bed feeling awkward about what’s going to happen next and I bet you anything your mattress squeaks because a criminal’s comfort is not going to be high on the list of priorities for jail funding when there are inmates trying to escape. Not you, though. I reckon you’re just sitting in your cell, accepting your fate, because you think you deserve to die. You sort of remind me of Jesus, to be honest. You have to bear sins and he had to bear sins, only his were heavier. I mean, imagine the weight of all the sins of the world.
If you could actually measure it, pouring out sins on the scales like self-rising flour, I have no idea what the heaviest crime would be, but I don’t think it would be yours. I reckon a lot of men would have done the same after what your wife told you. Think about that when you feel guilty. A couple of months ago, I printed off this list of all the men responsible for genocide, and at night when I can’t sleep, instead of counting sheep, I count dictators. I send them leaping over a wall, Hitler and Stalin and Saddam Hussein jumping through the air in their uniforms with their dark mustaches blowing in the breeze. Maybe you should try it.
I tell myself I couldn’t have known what was going to happen a year ago when Max put his arm around me in the garden. I try to remember how I was swept along in the moment, barely able to walk straight as Max ushered me inside, through the house, and upstairs to his bedroom. It smelled of dust and feet and aftershave. Max flicked on the light and closed the door as I stepped over a pair of boxer shorts crumpled up on the carpet. A hand on my back pushed me toward the wall. I glanced over my shoulder to see Max smile. He pushed harder. My hands touched the wall, then my body, then my head, all pressed up against a poster of a naked woman. The poster was cool so I rested my forehead against the model’s belly as Max kissed my neck. It was tingly, like if electricity had a mouth, then that is exactly how it would have felt.
That was the spark and we exploded into action, hands grabbing and lips hungry and breath quick and fast in our throats. Max turned me around and pushed his tongue into my mouth. His arms wrapped around my back, lifting me off the carpet. My hands gripped his shoulders as my head spun and the room whirled, blue curtains and white walls and a messy bed lurching toward us as we fell onto it in a heap.
Max was above me, his eyes fierce and focused as he dived in for the kiss. His lips found my cheek and my ear and my collarbone, traveling down my skin as he pulled up my top then yanked down my bra. There were my breasts, in the middle of Max Morgan’s bedroom, pale and pointy, and Max was gawping. And then he was touching. Soft at first, then harder and harder, and he knew what he was doing all right and it felt good so I groaned. I closed my eyes as Max’s lips found my nipple and Mr. Harris that’s probably where I should leave it tonight because I’ve got school in the morning, and besides, I’m blushing like anything.
Believe it or not the spider’s still here, staring out the shed window at all the black and silver, and if you ask me she must be sleeping because amazing as the universe is, I don’t think anyone can look at it for that long without getting bored unless they’re Stephen Hawking. I wonder if you can see the sky from your cell and if you ever think about the galaxy and how we’re just tiny specks in all this infinity. Sometimes I try to picture my house in the suburbs on the edge of the city, and then I zoom out to see the country, and then I zoom out to see the whole world, and then I zoom out to see the entire universe. There are fiery suns and deep black holes and shooting stars, and I fade into nothing and the trouble that I caused is just a microscopic blip among the mighty cosmic explosions.
There was a mighty cosmic explosion in Mum’s car after Max’s party. Somehow I made it outside for eleven. I was sobering up fast, but there was no disguising the smell. Of course, it all kicked off as soon as Mum caught a whiff of alcohol. I can’t remember what she said, but there was loud stuff about disappointment and angry stuff about trust, and she yelled all the way home as my head started to bang. Dad joined in when I got back in the house, but when I was sent to bed, I shoved my head under the pillow and grinned.
The Boy with the Brown Eyes. Who on earth was he and where had he gone and would I ever see him again? And Max. What would happen when we saw each other at school, and would he kiss me, most probably behind the recycle bin, where no teachers could see? Turning onto my back, I marveled at having two boys who might be interested when a few hours before I’d had none, and as I drifted off to sleep, I found myself thanking Grandpa. I only went to the party because of his stroke, and Mr. Harris even though I was in trouble and most probably grounded for the rest of my life, I couldn’t help but think of it as a stroke of good luck.
From,
Zoe
1 Fiction Road
Bath, UK