The World Between Us, page 13
I write ‘coffee’ and ‘gum’ in my head, next to ‘cycling’, in my list to send to Rowan. Then Mum takes my hand.
‘What was he like as a streamer?’
I plaster a smile on my face before it even registers that’s what I’m doing. ‘Oh, he was wonderful.’
Mum looks at me for a moment, waiting for more. And I let the moment stretch as an aeroplane goes by outside and Dad calls up, asking if she can put more salmon on the list.
She smiles and gets up. ‘Fair enough,’ she says.
I wait until she leaves, then dig out my phone and text the list to Rowan.
He replies straight away.
All right, got an idea. Two hours.
Two hours.
I want to delve into Google, looking for more videos of Wesley now I’ve brought him back to life. But every one of those is a dropped spoon.
Watching videos = 1 spoon
And I’m saving them all for Rowan.
I set an alarm. Close my eyes. And wait to Live again.
53
Rowan
And now I am with someone who’s helping a boy with bright yellow hair fix a helmet on to his head.
‘Hold still,
will you?’
‘I don’t want to wear a helmet! Benji doesn’t have to wear one,’ the boy – Jonah – moans.
Behind us, another boy with spiky hair sniggers behind his hand. And then I notice what he’s sitting on.
‘Bikes …’
Oh shit.
She spoke.
I don’t have my earphones in
so I’m pretty sure Jonah heard her.
I freeze.
Jonah stops squirming and looks so hard into the camera, it’s like he can see me. And I notice that he has the same dark-cave eyes as Rowan.
‘Who’s that?’ he says.
‘Never you –’
‘I’m Alice,’ I say. ‘Pleased to meet you, Jonah.’
Jonah blinks for a moment before putting out his finger and tapping the camera lens, so all I can see is the whorl of a fingerprint.
He’s gonna freak out
or ask questions
or say something rude.
Then he smiles. Wide, so I can see he has a tooth missing at the back.
‘We’re riding bikes. Are you riding with us, too, Alice?’
Bikes. Riding bikes.
I drop my voice.
‘Only if you want to.
I understand if not.’
Jonah clips his helmet on, like he’s forgotten that he didn’t want to wear it. Behind him, his friend peers over, trying to see who they’re talking to.
And it’s me. It’s me – like I’m there. Like I’m sitting astride my own bike, with my feet on the pedals, a yellow-striped helmet on my head and the whole cycle path at my feet.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, I’m riding bikes, too.’
Jonah smiles like he’s really seeing her.
And it makes me want to
duck down
and look with him.
Jonah scampers off and picks up a rusty-looking bike with stabilizers on. His friend Benji doesn’t have them, but neither of them seems worried about that. They push off and I watch them, riding and talking talking talking excitedly, out of breath, about nothing and everything, riding all over the pavement and in loops.
‘Stay where I can see you!’
I pick up the bike I borrowed from Charlie.
It’s a BMX and honestly
I don’t know how people ride these.
I think Jonah’s old
rust-bucket bike
is bigger than this one.
‘You definitely sure?’ I say to Alice.
Rowan crouches on his bike and I can see handlebars and the path stretching out before us. I suck in a lungful of breath.
‘Yes. Yes, I’m sure. Now go – catch up with them. You’re losing them.’
She’s right.
The little sods are miles away already.
I push off and my legs groan.
And we’re riding. We’re riding. And it’s nothing at all like riding with Wesley ever was. Rowan thrashes like a fish caught in a net, and the path swings left and right as his legs do, too. And the trees on either side of us blur by, and people walking dogs pull them back to let us past and –
We’re free.
We’re Living.
I can hear her
laughing.
It makes me feel like laughing, too.
So I cycle faster.
There’s a tunnel up ahead and sitting at the mouth are the boys, waiting for us to catch up while also trying to ram their tyres into each other. And I know Rowan sees them, but he doesn’t slow down.
We skid round them and their heads snap up.
‘See ya later, losers!’
Their shouts echo in the tunnel.
I look back quick
and see they’re following.
The tunnel is filled with words, but no sea creatures, and so we spurt out the other end and whip round a bollard in the middle of the path to keep going – going. And I can hear bikes right behind us now and shouts – high-pitched and breathless – and I pedal my own legs like it might help Rowan go faster – faster.
But he’s slowing down.
Oh
my
God.
This bike.
I think I might
die.
Jonah and Benji shoot out from behind us like fireworks and roar off ahead and Rowan skids to a halt.
‘Okay. Okay.
You guys win.
Stop here, okay?
The old people need a rest.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ I say, because I feel like I have spoons and spoons left to give. I’ve been on the back of the wind and raced cars and been round the world – and I’ve got what it takes to win.
I ditch the bike.
Sit on a bench.
My breath
H E A V E S.
The kids are laughing at me,
but they’re listening at least.
They’ve found some sticks
to sword-fight with.
‘Didn’t you bring any water?’
‘That.
That would have been a good idea.’
I cough and rub my knees.
‘Did it help, though?
Remembering your friend?’
I smile. ‘It’s better than going up a bell tower would have been. Although Wesley was a much better cyclist than you.’
My eyes search for it
haunting the skyline.
‘You say your friend was Wesley?
My art teacher who died was called that.’
‘Yes, he was your art teacher.’
I stop panting.
‘Your friend was my middle-aged art teacher …?’
My thoughts buzz like flies.
‘How old are you again?’
I’m lost in a memory.
‘He had a really beautiful bike, you know. Carbon fibre and painted the colour of a galaxy. And when he rode it, he rode it with everything he had. Everything that was Living. When we were on that bike, we were Alive and nothing else mattered.’
‘We?’
The penny sort of drops and I can feel it
P I N B A L L I N G
down my ribs.
‘He streamed for you, too.’
The breeze moves the trees in front of us so the view behind starts building from tiny shards, like one of Rowan’s paintings. And, dot by dot, I see a seaside town in a valley of green hills, snapping off into blue.
‘Do you think …’
I swallow.
‘Do you think, that if I hadn’t been watching, he would have slowed down? That he would have seen the car?’
Oh,
Alice.
I grip the bench like she might be able
to feel it.
‘You were watching.’
And it’s not a question, because
from the hollows in her voice
I know she was.
I don’t know why it’s easier to talk about it with Rowan – a boy that I’ve never even met – than it is with Mum. Maybe it’s because he can’t see me. Or that, right now, I can’t see him, either.
‘The bell tower was the last thing he saw. Before the car came out of nowhere and – and stopped him seeing altogether.’
I let out my breath slowly.
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t take you up.
Just –
something happened. Up there.
Jonah’s always bugging me to take him, but –’
‘It’s okay,’ I say quietly. ‘You don’t have to tell me.’
But the thing is,
even this,
the worst thing,
I want her to see and make
beautiful.
He swings round to check on Jonah and Benji, poking at something in a tree. And then I see his hands squeezing his legs like he’s clinging on to something that’s falling away.
I wish. I wish I were there to be solid for him.
‘After Dad left,
Mam’s drinking got worse.
She’d get into these
dark places
and the only thing that seemed to brighten them
were my paintings.’
I hunt for the places his paintings lurk in the distance – the tunnel by the playground and next to the sea; the castle climbing frame; the pavement in town. But we’re too far away to see even a hint of colour.
I lick my lips.
‘At some point, they stopped working.
So I tried to go bigger. Better.
Fill the whole world with colour just for her.’
My ribs feel tight.
‘I drew the water lilies.
You wouldn’t have seen from the alleyway,
because to see them properly
you had to go up.
High.’
His knee is quivering and I wonder if he’s cold or just afraid.
I grip my laptop, tight.
‘I broke into the bell tower with her.
She was already drunk, but
I thought I could snap her out of it somehow.’
I shake my head.
‘And I took Jonah.
He was only four.
We climbed up to the top
and I tried to get her to see
– look
– stop.
For just a moment.’
He breaks off and I can almost feel his body like an engine, powering up to explode into something.
‘It’s okay,’ I whisper.
‘She – she was swaying all over.
Dancing around, singing about flowers.
I tried to stop her, but –’
The words feel like acid.
‘She picked
Jonah
up
and she held him
O U T
over the edge.’
My stomach lurches and I’m pleased that Rowan swings round to check on his little brother again, now laughing hysterically and chasing his friend round the tree.
His breathing splinters.
‘I just –
She was smiling.
Smiling as she held him.
And his eyes were so –
confused.’
His voice cracks and I touch my screen like he might be able to feel it.
I sniff.
‘Anyway.
I screamed at her in the same way
Dad used to, before he left.
I pulled Jonah away from her and
I wouldn’t let her near him again.
Not even when we got home.
And her drinking got worse.
And eventually
she disappeared.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say quietly.
I nod at my shoes.
‘I just wish I’d been able to
protect her
in the way I thought I could.’
‘You were just a kid yourself. It’s not supposed to be that way round.’
Jonah’s laughter spikes through the speakers.
‘Do you think he remembers?’
I shrug.
‘I don’t –
I can’t talk to him about it.
But he must remember something,
because he’s desperate to get up there.
“See the flowers,” he says.
But I can’t take him.
I’ve gotta protect him –
especially from that.’
I sigh, long and low.
‘Could you hold your hands together?’
I’m too busy staring out into the distance
at the tower that almost
killed everything.
‘Huh?’
‘Put your hands together.’
I hook one hand
inside the other
like a prayer.
‘Why?’
‘Because,’ I say softly, ‘I very much want to hold your hand right now, but I can’t, so you’re just going to have to do it yourself.’
And there she goes again.
Shining a light in the darkest of places.
‘I failed her,’ I whisper.
I squeeze my own hands, tight.
‘You did beautiful things, Rowan. None of that is a failure. You know, Wesley was watching you. My mum said. He marked you out as someone special. Someone who could achieve great things.’
I laugh.
‘Yeah – Mr Cooper thought
everyone was special.
He put up every crappy painting like it
deserved a prize.’
‘Maybe. But, you know, he told my mum that you were different. That you could really be something.’
I swallow.
‘Yeah, well, no offence to the dead,
but he didn’t know what he was on about.’
I drop my voice to a whisper so it doesn’t scare him offline again. Not like last time.
‘I see it, too, you know.’
‘You see the good in everything.’
I stare at the bell tower
knifing into the clouds in the distance.
‘I’ve got other stuff to worry about.
Heating bills and
jobs and
a whole other human to protect.’
‘But isn’t there something you want for yourself?’
And
of course there is.
Of course.
‘Yeah.
There’s something.’
‘Well, go get it! I don’t mean to pry like last time, I really don’t, but there are all sorts of ways you can paint, Rowan. You can do courses from home now, in your spare time. Or you can go to college after w–’
‘No. Not that.’
Where would I get the money for that?
‘I mean –’
And it sort of feels like
J U M P I N G
when I’ve got no idea if she’s even got a net.
‘I mean –
I want –
you,
Alice.’
‘I –’
Oh. My chest waterspouts and seems to drag my insides out.
Me. He wants me.
Silence ain’t golden.
‘Listen.
I love streaming for you. I do.
But –
I don’t know, Alice –
don’t you want more?
Don’t you want to be here?
In real life?’
I do I do I do.
More than anything, I do. But I can’t, can I?
That’s not my real life.
‘I –’
Jonah
P L O U G H S
into me.
All I see is yellow hair.
‘Rowan! Rowan! Benji ate some berry sweets from that tree and now he’s got tummy ache.’
Oh Christ.
I stand up.
See Benji
C L U T C H I N G
his stomach.
(Talk about timing, dude.)
‘Alice. I’m sorry, I –’
‘Go!’ I say.
Relief prickles me.
‘I need to call his mum …’
I don’t want to disconnect.
I want to do what Alice said.
Take something for me.
I feel my words hanging like weights from my bones.
But who knows what the hell those berries were.
‘I’m sorry.’
Rowan is no longer streaming.
54
Alice
He wants me.
He wants. Me.
In my dream, we’re together, suspended in blue. He’s floating just a few centimetres above me – so close that I can feel the water rippling between us like an electric current.
His eyes are like dark oceans and they’re looking at me. Only me. He’s smiling – just enough to reveal a whisper of a dimple in his right cheek. And his hair waves like seaweed above him.
His eyes move slightly and I feel them flutter over my lips, my cheeks, my shoulders. And things are wonderful. Perfect. Almost impossible. Until my hunger flips and I reach out my hand.
He swishes away, using limbs like powerful fins. He’s still smiling at me and this time he’s asking me to go with him. Up, up, to where the water breaks. His legs kick, and his arms carve the water like butter, until he’s torpedoing to the surface.
I kick my legs, too. I battle my arms and wrench my body. But instead of going up with him, I sink. Lower. Lower.
Above me, he breaks the surface with a gasp. I reach out my hand. Try to cry out. And disappear into the black.
55
Alice
I wake up feeling tired, like I really have been swimming.
Dad comes in with breakfast and reads the paper out to me while I eat, stealing bites of sausage.
My phone buzzes. I ignore it.
Dad looks up. ‘You not going to get that?’
