The World Between Us, page 12
Mum stops eating. ‘You ate all three meals?’
‘I did,’ he says, swallowing.
‘And now you’re eating that one …’
He nods again, but he’s smiling this time.
‘Greedy sod.’ Mum shakes her head.
I take a bite of my burger. And if I close my eyes, it really is just like being nine again, having picnics on the floor. Even though it’s cucumber, and special plain burgers Dad has fried himself, and really just the simple food I eat every day – it feels different. Like going back in time.
‘Don’t forget your toy,’ Dad says.
Mum tuts. ‘Isn’t Alice a bit old for –’
‘No way!’ I say, scrabbling in the box.
I have a clockwork T-rex that marches across my knee when I wind it up. And I think of Rowan pairing small dinosaur socks and I wonder if – one day – I could give this to his brother. I clutch it.
Mum has a stegosaurus who sings when you press its belly and Dad has a pterodactyl stress toy, which, he says, will come in handy when he’s fighting Mum over who does the washing-up.
And when we’ve finished, we sit up and drink our Diet Cokes and talk and laugh and pretend that we’re a real family in a real restaurant. And it makes me feel that little bit more real myself.
‘So is Monday night going to be McDonald’s night from now on?’ I ask Dad.
He pats his belly. ‘I don’t think I have the stomach for that.’
Mum gathers up all the rubbish and whispers in my ear, ‘Looks like he does to me.’
48
Rowan
And now I am walking through town with Rowan, dodging shoppers with heavy bags and people riding skateboards on the pavement.
The streets throb with people, like we’re inside the artery of a giant grey heart. We skirt round toddlers who are tied to their parents by reins. We stumble into a bollard to avoid a family with their noses pressed against a restaurant window, looking at a menu. We duck and we dodge and we speed up and we slow down.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Oh, hey!’
I shout into my earphone mic.
‘My boss Sue needs
some money paying into the bank.
Thought you’d like to come for the ride.’
I’m not sure she can see much
with all these tourists infest the place.
It’s not at all like Tokyo, and not just because I’m not being helicoptered around. The shopfronts are salt-stained and don’t buzz with screens showing worlds within worlds. They’re closed off from the street by doors and don’t come spilling out into the crowds. I distantly remember parts of it from when I’d go shopping with Mum, but not enough for me to know exactly where I am. It’s like walking through the memory of an old dream.
Rowan turns to avoid a kid on a scooter and I can see now why all the people have been pushed to the sides.
In the middle is a valley of cars.
On one side of the road, the cars sit bumper to bumper, chugging out smoke and glinting like silver teeth. The other side is clear until a red sports car thunders up, rattling the shop windows with a guttering roar.
My chest tightens.
‘Is there a quieter route?’
I can see the bank at the top of the road. But.
‘Sure.’
I duck down a side street.
I still feel like I’m choking.
‘Not a fan of people either, eh?’
‘It’s not the people,’ I gasp. ‘It’s the cars.’
Cars that stop people altogether.
I know there’s a car park ahead this way.
So I turn right, down an alley with overflowing bins and
half-stolen bikes and
trainers wrapped round overhead wires.
It’s dark. It’s dark.
I blink and turn the brightness up on my laptop, but I know this darkness. It’s Wesley. Creeping out of the drawer in the back of my mind like a lost shadow. Wesley – who would have died somewhere on one of these roads.
Wesley, whose blood might still be on the tarmac, being run over again and again by cars and cars and cars driven by people who have no idea what’s under their wheels. People who weren’t there to see it.
Not like I was.
‘Can we stop?’
She sounds out of breath.
‘Sure.’
I move a snail off a red-brick wall and
sit down in its place.
‘You okay?’
I think about making something up again. But I’m losing track of all the lies.
I close my eyes. ‘No.’
I kick the wall behind me.
‘If I’d known you were afraid of cars,
I’d never have –’
‘I’m not afraid,’ I say.
I used to love them. I’d sit with my head out of the window like a dog as Dad drove me to our next adventure. I’d push him to go faster – faster – but then I saw what’s at the end of a speed record and –
Wrists. Wrists. Where are my wrists?
‘Alice?
It’s all right, you know.
I’m not a fan of …
some stuff, too.’
I hunt the skyline for the
bell tower in the distance.
I unstick my throat.
‘Show me something wonderful,’ I say. ‘Show me something Alive.’
‘Alive?’
I can see
seagulls in the sky.
The snail I moved.
A line of ants crawling over a spat-out sweet.
It’s all alive, but
it’s not particularly wonderful.
‘I dunno if this counts …’
I get off the wall and
walk back to the mouth of the alley.
I don’t want to go back towards the road, and I’m almost ready to scream at him to stop when he does anyway. And he takes the camera off his chest and tilts it so I can see the pavement.
And on the ground, in the middle of an alleyway, is a painting. Dusty and scuffed by shoes, but still there. Colour rolls round the corner of a building ahead, unfurling like a carpet at our feet. Pinks, blues, greens and yellows scratch into one another – droplets of what look like water just about still glistening in the sun overhead.
It’s like peering into the top of a snow globe, but I feel like the one who’s been shaken.
‘Is it one of yours?’
I swallow.
‘Yeah. Kind of.’
My breathing is going back to normal.
‘What is it?’
Seeing it now,
it looks like nothing.
Like a skidmark from something that
never should have happened.
‘It was a water lily.
Mam’s favourite.’
It’s not like his other drawings, that have burst from the cracks and brought themselves to life.
This one feels as though it’s dying. Like it’s slowly being worn away away away by the thousand footsteps that are trying to forget that once upon a time a living thing bloomed here.
He puts my camera back in its holder so my view changes to the sky, where – in the distance – I can see the bell tower. Wesley’s finish line throwing the world into shadow.
And I want to look away. I want to keep walking. I want to push it to the back of my mind.
I swallow.
‘Don’t you get annoyed? At people walking over your painting?’
I look at the mistake under my trainers.
‘Some things are better forgotten.’
Flowers blooming from a Monopoly world.
Her smile as she held him.
O U T.
My insides jump and I cough them back down.
‘Listen,
the bank’s gonna close.
I should …’
‘I’ve got to go, anyway,’ I lie.
He puts his hand up to disconnect the stream and I watch as the colour drains.
Rowan is no longer streaming.
49
Alice
It’s taken half an hour and several spoons to muster the courage to type his name into Google.
Wesley Cooper.
Every letter dredges up a new memory from that day. The way the sun bled into the clouds. The starburst glare from the red traffic light. The shadow in the window of the car driver’s seat before the stream went dead.
Just like Rowan’s floor painting. I’ve buried it underfoot in the hope that eventually it all gets worn away. But what if I stopped staining the soles of my feet? What if I tilted my perspective? What if I stopped and looked and saw the life that once bloomed on the other side of the camera?
The truth is, I didn’t know Wesley at all. It took some digging in Screen Cast for me to even find out his surname. I know that he wore his watch on his right hand. I know that he rode his bike to work and at weekends. I know that he used to love to go as fast as he possibly could.
But I don’t know anything of the man who got all those hundreds of people to turn up at his funeral. Or of the person who passed a note to my mum to say that he saw something special in Rowan. Something that I see, too.
I press enter.
I expect him to come up as the top result, but instead I see pages from businesses and people living whole worlds away. I’m about to give up when I click search videos.
And there, at the top, is a picture of the handlebars of a bike. Wesley’s bike.
My throat clogs. Something inside me is telling me to close the window, shut my eyes and pretend that I never searched for his name. But I don’t. I force my mouse to hover over the video.
And I click play.
50
WesleyCycles67
And now I am back with Wesley, speeding along streets lined with people. And he’s cycling so fast that their faces blur into lines and their cheers stretch out like passing sirens.
My heart is beating a million times a minute, because he’s going too fast. He’s going too fast.
But he’s also not going fast enough.
Ahead of him is another cyclist, head down but body standing in its seat, forcing legs to pump so hard that the bike swings from left to right. On the rider’s back is the number twenty-four and ahead is a finish line wrapped in gold and this person’s going to get there first.
I can hear Wesley’s breaths bursting behind me like a steam train. As if nothing – not even a speeding car – could ever stop them.
The camera shakes and swings. The hands gripping the handlebars flush red.
He’s gaining on number twenty-four. So fast that soon the cyclist’s head next to him swings round to face us – their expression a flash of surprise before we’re gone again. And it reminds me of the joy we felt, passing the traffic-stuck cars on our final day together. The looks on the faces of the drivers as they realized that one man on a bicycle could beat a two-tonne car.
Wesley leans back and his hands disappear from his handlebars as the finish-line tape bursts against the camera. And I can hear him. Panting and laughing. His fists flying into view, clenched and impossibly strong.
‘I did it,’ a voice says from behind me. ‘Yes!’
The bike slows to a stop in the crowd where people of all ages are jumping up and down and cheering. And the camera is lost for a moment within their smiles and screams, before hands pick me up and spin me round.
And there – floating in a sea of people – is a man.
A yellow-striped helmet is strapped to his head, and purple sunglasses reflect a camera back at me. He’s wearing a fitted top that’s so tight, it’s like he himself has been painted blue and green. And curling through the gaps in all of this are shocks of bright red hair.
This is Wesley. The Wesley on the other side of the camera.
And although it’s the same Wesley I was with when he died, here he’s something else, too. A Wesley worth remembering.
A Wesley who Lived.
51
Rowan
And now I am in a bedroom that isn’t mine.
A single bedframe is pushed into a corner under a window, the faded striped bedspread still messy with sleep. The walls are a deep royal blue, like we’ve been swallowed by a whale along with a rickety wardrobe, an old radio and a desk littered with utility bills and final notices.
I’m in Rowan’s room. Alone. With him.
I should have tidied.
Actually, I should’ve just told her
I’m busy.
Instead, I just hover at the door,
wondering whether it’s weird
to sit on my bed
with a girl who’s not really there.
‘So this is your room,’ I say.
‘Yeah, sorry about the mess.
Doing homework with Jonah and
haven’t got round to tidying yet.
What’s up?’
I’m still clutching my phone with my message on it asking him if we could chat. He jumped online so fast that I haven’t entirely worked out what I’m going to ask him yet. Plus, we’re both staring at his bed. And even though I stare at a bed all day every day, his is like a different world. A world of quiet. A world where his body warms with sleep. It’s very distracting.
I cough. ‘You don’t have any art up on the walls?’
I look around.
‘I don’t really spend much time in here.
Just a place to crash.’
Plus, all my pictures –
every single one –
are in Mam’s room.
‘Yeah, me neither,’ I lie.
I pull on the ends of my hair, scrunching my face up, because I can hear him working out a question to ask me and that’s not why I’m here.
‘Could-you-take-me-up-the-bell-tower-tomorrow?’ I say, fast, so it all comes out as one word.
The air leaves the room.
I sink down the wall.
‘Huh?’
‘The bell tower,’ I say, slower this time. ‘I heard your friend Charlie say that there might be a way up? Only I need to remember a – a friend – and it was the last thing he saw, so I thought perhaps –’
‘No.’
I say it louder than I planned, but.
‘No.
I’m not –
not up there.’
‘Oh,’ I whisper.
From the floor, things in his room look different. The soft world of the bed is far away. There’s dust gathering at the edges of the carpet. Dropped drawing pins point to the ceiling.
‘I didn’t mean … It’s just my friend. He – he died, you see. And I was hoping that –’
‘I ain’t going up there.’
I should be listening,
but my head is filled with
Mam.
Jonah.
That word.
Died died died.
‘That’s okay,’ I say quietly. ‘We don’t have to.’
I can hear him breathing like he’s been running. Or perhaps like I used to when I saw the bell tower beyond my curtains. But for me that always meant remembering Wesley – remembering that he’d never reach his finish line.
So what does it mean for Rowan?
‘If you want to talk about anything, you know …’
I pinch my eyes.
‘No. Sorry, I’m being stupid.
It’s just –
I’m afraid of heights.
That’s all.’
Lying feels like coming up for air.
‘Yeah – that’s it.’
I give a mock shiver.
‘I’ll keep on solid ground, thanks.’
It feels strange that a boy whose favourite place is at the top of a climbing frame should be afraid of heights, but I laugh.
‘Oh! Oh, I see. Yes, probably not, then.’
My head is still in my hands,
but she can’t see that.
‘Yeah. It’d be like you driving, eh?’
I purse my lips.
‘Well, that’s the thing, you see. My friend – the one who died – he was knocked off his bike in a car accident. So it’s not that I’m afraid of cars as such, just that …’
I stare at the paint under my fingernails.
‘Yeah. I get it.’
‘Maybe there’s something else we can do instead?’
I get up again and
dust myself off.
‘Yeah, sure, whatever.
Why don’t you text me a list of ideas
and we’ll do them tomorrow?
Right now, I’ve got to …’
Check on Jonah.
Make sure he’s still
breathing.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, of course.’
I watch his hand hover over the door handle. And something feels awkward. Strange. In a way that it hasn’t between us before.
‘I’m sorry about your friend.’
From my bed, I look out beyond the flowers on my window sill, to where the bell tower rises.
‘Yes. Me too.’
Rowan is no longer streaming.
52
Alice
I wait until Mum is just about to leave for the shops before I ask her, so she won’t have as much time to sit down with the answers.
‘What was Wesley like to work with?’
She stops checking how much shampoo I have left and her eyebrows disappear into her curls.
‘Erm – wow. Wesley. You’re talking about him now?’
I keep my eyes on my duvet and she slides herself on to it, shopping bag still over her arm.
‘Well, he was nice. Bit of a joker. Cared a lot about the kids. Drank way too much coffee and had the most awful temper on him when he got going. He had this thing about gum and, if he caught anyone in his class with it, you’d hear him ranting two classrooms along.’ She smiles. ‘But he was lovely really. The school’s a darker place since he left.’
