Before I Die (6 page)

‘High, isn’t it?’ Cal says.

‘Yes.’

‘Shall we go on the swings next?’

‘Yes.’

Yes to everything you say, Cal, but first I want to feel the air circle my face. I want to watch the curve of the earth as we slowly shift round the sun.

‘I told you it would be fun.’ Cal’s face is shining with good humour. ‘Let’s go on
everything
else!’

There’s a queue at the swings, so we go on the seesaw. I’m still heavier than him, still his big sister, and I can slam my legs on the ground so he bounces high and screams with laughter as he falls back hard on his bum. He’ll have bruises, but he doesn’t care. Say yes, just say yes.

We go everywhere – the little house at the top of the ladder in the sandpit, where we just fit in. The motorbike on a giant spring, which veers drunkenly to one side when I sit on it, so I scrape my knee on the ground. There’s a wooden beam and we pretend we’re gymnasts, an alphabet snake to walk, a hopscotch, some monkey bars. Then back to the swings, where a queue of mums with their bits of tissue and fat-faced babies tut at me as I beat Cal to the only available one. My dress flashes thigh. It makes me laugh. It makes me lean back and swing even higher. Maybe if I swing high enough, the world will be different.

I don’t see Zoey arrive. When Cal points her out, she’s leaning against the entrance to the playground watching us. She might’ve been there for ages. She’s wearing a crop top and a skirt that only just covers her bum.

‘Morning,’ she says as we join her. ‘I see you started without me.’

I feel myself blush. ‘Cal wanted me to go on the swings.’

‘And you had to say yes, of course.’

‘Yes.’

She looks thoughtfully at Cal. ‘We’re going to the market,’ she tells him. ‘We’re going to buy things and talk about periods, so you’re going to be really bored.’

He looks up at her crossly, his face smeared with dirt. ‘I want to go to the magic shop.’

‘Good. Off you go then. See you later.’

‘He has to come with us,’ I tell her. ‘I promised him.’

She sighs and walks off. Cal and me find ourselves following.

Zoey was the only girl at school who wasn’t afraid of my illness. She’s still the only person I know who walks down the street as if muggings never happen, as if people never get stabbed, buses never mount pavements, illness never strikes. Being with her is like being told they got it wrong and I’m not dying, someone else is, and it’s all a mistake.

‘Wiggle,’ she calls over her shoulder. ‘Move those hips, Tessa!’

This dress is very short. It shows every shiver and fold. A car hoots. A group of boys look long and hard, at my breasts, at my arse.

‘Why do you have to do what she says?’ Cal asks.

‘I just do.’

Zoey’s delighted. She waits for us to catch up and links arms with me. ‘You’re forgiven,’ she says.

‘For what?’

She leans in conspiratorially. ‘For being so horrid about your crap shag.’

‘I wasn’t!’

‘Yeah, you were. But it’s OK.’

‘It’s rude to whisper!’ Cal says.

She pushes him ahead of us, pulls me closer to her as we walk. ‘So,’ she says. ‘How far are you prepared to go? Would you get a tattoo if I told you to?’

‘Yes.’

‘Would you take drugs?’

‘I
want
to take drugs!’

‘Would you tell that man you love him?’

The man she points to is bald and older than my dad. He’s coming out of the newsagent’s ripping cellophane from a packet of fags and letting it flutter from his hand to the ground.

‘Yes.’

‘Go on then.’

The man taps a fag from the box, lights it and blows smoke into the air. I walk up to him and he turns, half smiling, maybe expecting someone he knows.

‘I love you,’ I say.

He frowns, then notices Zoey giggling. ‘Piss off,’ he says. ‘Bloody idiot.’

It’s hilarious. Me and Zoey hold onto each other and laugh a lot. Cal grimaces at us in despair. ‘Can we just go now?’ he says.

The market’s heaving. People everywhere jostling, like the day is full of emergencies. Fat old women with their shopping baskets shove past me; parents with buggies take up all the room. Standing here with the grey light of this day around me is like being in a dream, as if I’m not moving at all, as if the pavement is sticky and my feet made of lead. Boys stalk past me, hoods up, faces blank. Girls I used to go to school with meander by. They don’t recognize me now; it’s been so long since I’ve been in a classroom. The air is thick with the smell of hotdogs, burgers and onions. Everything’s for sale – boiling chickens hanging by their feet, trays of tripe and offal, half-sides of pig, their cracked ribs exposed. Material, wool, lace and curtains. At the toy stall, dogs yap and do somersaults and wind-up soldiers clang cymbals. The stallholder smiles at me, points to a giant plastic doll sitting mute in her cellophane.

‘Only a tenner, love.’

I turn away, pretend not to hear.

Zoey looks at me sternly. ‘You’re supposed to be saying yes to everything. Next time, buy it – whatever it is. OK?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Back in a minute.’ And she disappears amongst the crowd.

I don’t want her to go. I need her. If she doesn’t come back, my day will amount to a turn round the playground and a couple of wolf whistles on the way to the market.

‘You all right?’ Cal says.

‘Yeah.’

‘You don’t look it.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Well, I’m bored.’

Which is dangerous, because obviously I’ll have to say yes to him if he asks to go back home.

‘Zoey’ll be back in a minute. Maybe we could get the bus across town. We could go to the magic shop.’

Cal shrugs, shoves his hands in his pockets. ‘She won’t want to do that.’

‘Look at the toys while you’re waiting.’

‘The toys are crap.’

Are they? I used to come here with Dad and look at them. Everything used to gleam.

Zoey comes back looking agitated. ‘Scott’s a lying bastard,’ she says.

‘Who?’

‘Scott. He said he worked on a stall, but he’s not here.’

‘Stoner Boy? When did he tell you that?’

She looks at me as if I’m completely insane and walks off again. She goes over to a man behind the fruit stall and leans over boxes of bananas to talk to him. He looks at her breasts.

A woman comes up to me. She’s carrying several plastic bags. She looks right at me and I don’t look away.

‘Ten pork chops, three packs of smoked bacon and a boiling chicken,’ she whispers. ‘You want them?’

‘Yes.’

She passes a bag over, then picks at her scabby nose while I find some money. I give her five pounds and she digs around in her pocket and gives me two pounds change. ‘That’s a bargain,’ she says.

Cal looks a little afraid as she walks away. ‘Why did you do that?’

‘Shut up,’ I tell him, because nowhere in the rules does it say I have to be glad about what I do. I wonder, since I only have twelve pounds left, if I’m allowed to change the rules so that I can only say yes to things that are free. The bag drips blood at my feet. I wonder if I have to keep everything I buy.

Zoey comes back, notices the bag and peels it from me. ‘What the hell’s in here?’ She peers inside. ‘It looks like bits of dead dog!’ She chucks the whole lot in a bin, then turns back to me, smiling. ‘I’ve found Scott. He was here after all. Jake’s with him. Come on.’

As we edge our way through the crowd, Zoey tells me that she’s seen Scott a few times since we went round to their house. She doesn’t look at me as she tells me this.

‘Why didn’t you say so?’

‘You’ve been out of action for over four weeks! Anyway, I thought you’d be pissed off.’

It’s quite shocking to see them in daylight, standing behind a stall that sells torches and toasters, clocks and kettles. They look older than I remember.

Zoey goes round the back to talk to Scott. Jake nods at me.

‘All right?’ he says.

‘Yeah.’

‘Doing some shopping?’

He looks different – sweaty and vaguely embarrassed. A woman comes up behind me, and Cal and I have to step out of the way for her to get to the stall. She buys four batteries. They cost a pound. Jake puts them in a plastic bag for her and takes her money. She goes away.

‘Do you want some batteries?’ he asks. He doesn’t quite look me in the eyes. ‘You don’t have to pay.’

There’s something about the way he says it, as if he’s doing me an enormous favour, as if he’s sorry for me and wants to show he’s a decent bloke – it tells me that he knows. Zoey’s told him. I can see the guilt and pity in his eyes. He shagged a dying girl and now he’s afraid. I might be contagious; my illness brushed his shoulder and may lie in wait for him.

‘Do you want some then?’ He picks up a packet of batteries and waves them at me.

‘Yes,’ comes out of my mouth. The disappointment of the word has to be swallowed down hard as I take his stupid batteries and put them in my bag.

Cal nudges me hard in the ribs. ‘Can we go now?’

‘Yes.’

Zoey has her arm round Scott’s waist. ‘No!’ she says. ‘We’re going back to their place. They get a lunch break in half an hour.’

‘I’m taking Cal across town.’

Zoey smiles as she comes over. She looks lovely, as if Scott’s warmed her up. ‘Aren’t you supposed to say yes?’

‘Cal asked first.’

She frowns. ‘They’ve got some ketamine back at their place. It’s all arranged. Bring Cal if you want. They’ll have something for him to do, a PlayStation or something.’

‘You told Jake.’

‘Told him what?’

‘About me.’

‘I didn’t.’

She blushes, and has to chuck her cigarette down and stamp it out so that she doesn’t have to look at me.

I can just imagine how she did it. She went round to their house and made them strap a joint together and she insisted on having first toke, inhaling long and hard as they both watched her. Then she shuffled down next to Scott and said, ‘Hey, do you remember Tessa?’

And then she told them. She might even have cried. I bet Scott put his arm round her. I bet Jake grabbed the joint and inhaled so deeply that he didn’t have to think about it.

I grab Cal’s hand and steer him away. Away from Zoey, away from the market. I pull him down the steps at the back of the stalls and onto the towpath that follows the canal.

‘Where are we going?’ he whines.

‘Shut up.’

‘You’re scaring me.’

I look down at his face and I don’t care.

I have this dream sometimes that I’m walking round at home, just in and out of rooms, and no one in my family recognizes me. I pass Dad on the stairs and he nods at me politely, as if I’ve come to clean the house, or it’s really a hotel. Cal stares at me suspiciously as I go into my bedroom. Inside, all my things have gone and another girl is there instead of me, a girl wearing a flowered dress, with bright lips and cheeks as firm as apples. That’s my parallel life, I think. The one where I’m healthy, where Jake would be glad to have met me.

In real life, I drag my brother along the towpath towards the café that overlooks the canal.

‘It’ll be good,’ I tell him. ‘We’re going to have ice cream and hot chocolate and Coke.’

‘You’re not supposed to have sugar. I’m telling Dad.’

I grip his hand even harder. A man is standing on the path a little further up, between us and the café. He’s wearing pyjamas and looking at the canal. A cigarette ripens in his mouth.

Cal says, ‘I want to go home.’

But I want to show him the rats on the towpath, the leaves ripped screaming from trees, the way people avoid what’s difficult, the way this man in pyjamas is more real than Zoey, trotting up behind us with her big gob and silly blonde hair.

‘Go away,’ I tell her without even turning round.

She grabs my arm. ‘Why does everything have to be such a big deal with you?’

I push her off. ‘I don’t know, Zoey. Why do you think?’

‘It’s not like it’s a secret. Loads of people know you’re ill. Jake didn’t mind, but now he thinks you’re a complete weirdo.’

‘I
am
a complete weirdo.’

She looks at me with narrowed eyes. ‘I think you like being sick.’

‘You think?’

‘You can’t bear to be normal.’

‘Yeah, you’re right, it’s great. Want to swap?’

‘Everybody dies,’ she says, like it’s something she’s only just thought of and wouldn’t mind for herself.

Cal tugs at my sleeve. ‘Look,’ he says.

The man in pyjamas has waded into the canal. He’s splashing about in the shallows and smacking at the water with his hands. He looks at us blankly, then smiles, showing several gold teeth. I feel my spine tingle.

‘Fancy a swim, ladies?’ he calls. He’s got a Scottish accent. I’ve never been to Scotland.

‘Get in with him,’ Zoey says. ‘Why don’t you?’

‘Are you telling me to?’

She grins at me maliciously. ‘Yes.’

I glance at the tables outside the café. People are gazing this way. They’ll think I’m a junkie, a psycho, a head case. I roll up my dress and tuck it in my knickers.

‘What are you doing?’ Cal hisses. ‘Everyone’s looking!’

‘Pretend you’re not with me then.’

‘I will!’ He sits stubbornly on the grass as I take off my shoes.

I dip in my big toe. The water’s so cold that my whole leg creeps with numbness.

Zoey touches my arm. ‘Don’t, Tess. I didn’t mean it. Don’t be stupid.’

Doesn’t she get it at all?

I launch myself up to my thighs and ducks quack away in alarm. It’s not deep, a bit muddy, probably with all sorts of crap in the bottom. Rats swim in this water. People chuck in tin cans and shopping trolleys and needles and dead dogs. The soft mud squelches between my toes.

Gold Tooth waves, laughs as he wades towards me, slapping his sides. ‘You’re a good girl,’ he says. His lips are blue and his gold teeth glint. He has a gash on his head and fresh blood oozes from his hairline towards his eyes. This makes me feel even colder.

A man comes out of the café waving a tea towel. ‘Hey!’ he shouts. ‘Hey, get out of there!’

He’s wearing an apron and his stomach wobbles as he leans down to help me. ‘Are you crazy?’ he says. ‘You could get sick from that water.’ He turns to Zoey. ‘Are you with her?’