Before I Die (8 page)

Thirteen

I thought it was morning, but it isn’t. I thought the house was this quiet because everyone had got up and gone out. It’s only six o’clock though, and I’m stuck with the muffled light of dawn.

I get a packet of cheese nibbles from the kitchen cupboard and turn on the radio. Following a pile-up several people have been trapped in their cars overnight on the M3. They had no access to toilet facilities, and food and water had to be delivered to them by the emergency services. Gridlock. The world is filling up. A Tory MP cheats on his wife. A body is found in a hotel. It’s like listening to a cartoon. I turn it off and get a choc-ice from the freezer. It makes me feel vaguely drunk and very cold. I get my coat off the peg and creep about the kitchen listening for leaves and shadows and the soft sound of dust falling. This warms me up a bit.

It’s seventeen minutes past six.

Maybe something different will be out in the garden – wild buffalo, a spaceship, mounds of red roses. I open the back door really slowly, begging the world to bring me something startling and new. But it’s all horribly familiar – empty flowerbeds, soggy grass and low grey cloud.

I text Zoey one word:
DRUGS
!!

She doesn’t text back. She’s at Scott’s, I bet, hot and happy in his arms. They came to visit me at the hospital, sat together on one chair like they got married and I missed it. They brought me some plums and a Halloween torch from the market.

‘I’ve been helping Scott on the stall,’ Zoey said.

All I could think was how quickly the end of October had come, and how the weight of Scott’s arm across her shoulder was slowing her down. A week has gone by since then. Although she’s texted me every day, she doesn’t seem interested in my list any more.

Without her, I guess I’ll just stand here on the step and watch the clouds gather and burst. Water will run in rivulets down the kitchen window and another day will begin to collapse around me. Is that living? Is it even anything?

A door opens and shuts next door. There’s the heavy tread of boots on mud. I walk across and stick my head over the fence.

‘Hello again!’

Adam puts his hand to his chest as if I gave him a heart attack. ‘Jesus! You scared me!’

‘Sorry.’

He’s not dressed for gardening. He’s wearing a leather jacket and jeans and he’s carrying a motorcycle helmet.

‘Are you going out?’

‘Yeah.’

We both look at his bike. It’s down by the shed, tied up. It’s red and silver. It looks as if it’d bolt if you let it free.

‘It’s a nice bike.’

He nods. ‘I just got it fixed.’

‘What was wrong with it?’

‘It got knocked over and the forks got twisted. Do you know about bikes?’

I think about lying, but it’s the kind of lie that would catch you out very quickly. ‘Not really. I’ve always wanted to go on one though.’

He gives me an odd look. It makes me wonder what I look like. Yesterday I looked like a smack-head because my skin seemed to be turning yellow. I put earrings in last night to try and counteract the effect, but I forgot to check my face this morning. Anything could’ve happened during the night. I feel a bit uncomfortable with him looking at me like that.

‘Listen,’ he says. ‘There’s something I should probably tell you.’

I can tell by the discomfort in his voice what it’ll be, and I want to save him from it.

‘It’s all right,’ I say. ‘My dad’s a real blabbermouth. Even strangers look at me with pity these days.’

‘Really?’ He looks startled. ‘It’s just I hadn’t seen you around for a while, so I asked your brother if you were OK. It was him who told me.’

I look at my feet, at a patch of lawn in front of my feet, at the gap between the grass and the bottom of the fence.

‘I thought you had diabetes. You know, when you fainted that time. I didn’t realize.’

‘No.’

‘I’m sorry. I mean, I was very sorry when he told me.’

‘Yes.’

‘It felt important to tell you I know.’

‘Thanks.’

Our words sound very loud. They take up all the room in my head and sit there echoing back at me.

Eventually I say, ‘People tend to get a bit freaked when they find out, like they just can’t bear it.’ He nods, as if he knows this. ‘But it’s not as if I’m going to drop dead this very second. I’ve got a whole list of things I’m going to do first.’

I didn’t know I was going to tell him this. It surprises me. It also surprises me when he smiles.

‘Like what?’ he says.

I’m certainly not telling him about Jake or about jumping in the river. ‘Well, drugs are next.’

‘Drugs?’

‘Yeah, and I don’t mean aspirin.’

He laughs. ‘No, I didn’t think you did.’

‘My friend’s going to get me some E.’

‘Ecstasy? You should take mushrooms, they’re better.’

‘They make you hallucinate, don’t they? I don’t want skeletons rushing at me.’

‘You’ll feel dreamy, not trippy.’

That’s not very reassuring because I don’t think my dreams are like other people’s. I end up in desolate places that are hard to get back from. I wake up hot and thirsty.

‘I can get you some if you want,’ he says.

‘You can?’

‘Today if you like.’

‘Today?’

‘No time like the present.’

‘I promised my friend I wouldn’t do anything without her.’

He raises an eyebrow. ‘That’s a lot to promise.’

I look away and up to the house. Dad’ll be up soon and straight onto his computer. Cal will be off to school. ‘I could ring her, see if she can come over.’

He zips up his jacket. ‘All right.’

‘Where are you going to get them from?’

A slow smile lifts the edges of his mouth. ‘One day I’ll take you out on the bike and show you.’ He backs off down the path, still smiling. I’m held by his eyes, pale green in this early light.

Fourteen

‘Where do you reckon he gets them from, Zoey?’

She yawns hugely. ‘Legoland?’ she says. ‘Toytown?’

‘Why are you being so horrible?’

She turns on the bed and looks at me. ‘Because he’s boring and ugly and you’ve got me, so I don’t know why you’re even interested. You shouldn’t have asked him for drugs. I told you I’d get them.’

‘You haven’t exactly been around.’

‘Last time I looked, you were flat on your back in hospital and I was visiting you!’

‘And last time I looked, I was only there because you told me to jump in a river!’

She sticks her tongue out, so I turn back to the window. Adam got home ages ago, went inside for half an hour, then came back out and started raking leaves. I thought he’d have knocked on the door by now. Maybe we’re supposed to go to him.

Zoey comes to stand beside me and we watch him together. Every time he loads leaves onto the wheelbarrow, dozens of them fly off again in the wind and settle back on the lawn.

‘Hasn’t he got anything better to do?’

I knew she’d think that. She doesn’t have much patience for anything she has to wait for. If she planted a seed, she’d have to dig it back up and look at it every day to see if it was growing yet.

‘He’s gardening.’

She gives me a withering look. ‘Is he retarded?’

‘No!’

‘Shouldn’t he be at college or something?’

‘I think he looks after his mum.’

She looks at me with plotting eyes. ‘You fancy him.’

‘I don’t.’

‘You do. You’re secretly in love with him. You know stuff about him you couldn’t possibly know if you didn’t care.’

I shake my head, try to put her off the scent. She’ll play with it now, make it bigger than it would have been without her.

‘Do you stand here every day spying on him?’

‘No.’

‘I bet you do. I’m going to ask him if he fancies you back.’

‘No, Zoey!’

She runs to the door laughing. ‘I’m going to ask him if he wants to marry you!’

‘Please, Zoey. Don’t mess it up.’

She walks slowly back across the room, shaking her head. ‘Tessa, I thought you understood the rules! Never let a bloke into your heart – it’s fatal.’

‘What about you and Scott?’

‘That’s different.’

‘Why?’

She smiles. ‘That’s just sex.’

‘No, it’s not. When you visited me at the hospital, you could barely drag your eyes from his face.’

‘Rubbish!’

‘It’s true.’

Zoey used to live her life as if the human race was about to become extinct, like nothing really mattered. But around Scott, she goes all soft and warm. Doesn’t she know this about herself?

She’s looking at me so seriously that I grab her face and kiss it, because I want her to smile again. Her lips are soft and she smells nice. It crosses my mind that it might be possible to suck some of her good white cells into me in this way, but she pushes me off before I have a chance to test my theory.

‘What did you do that for?’

‘Because you’re spoiling it. Now go and ask Adam if he’s got the mushrooms.’

‘You go.’

I laugh at her. ‘We’ll both go.’

She wipes her lips with her sleeve and looks confused. ‘OK, fine. Your bedroom’s starting to smell weird anyway.’

When Adam sees us coming across the lawn, he puts down his rake and walks over to meet us at the fence. I feel a bit dizzy as he gets closer. The garden seems brighter than before.

‘This is my friend Zoey.’

He nods at her.

‘I’ve heard
so
much about you!’ she tells him. And she sighs, a sound that makes her seem small and helpless. Every boy I ever knew thought Zoey was gorgeous.

‘Is that right?’

‘Oh yes! Tessa talks about you all the time!’

I give her a quick kick to shut her up, but she dodges me and swishes her hair about.

‘Did you get them?’ I ask, wanting to distract him from her.

He reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a small plastic bag and passes it to me. Inside are small dark mushrooms. They look half formed, secret, not quite ready for the world.

‘Where did you get them?’

‘I picked them.’

Zoey snatches the bag from me and holds it up. ‘How do we know they’re right? They could be toadstools!’

‘They’re not,’ he says. ‘They’re not Death Caps or Destroying Angels either.’

She frowns, passes them back to him. ‘I don’t think we’ll bother. We’re better off with Ecstasy.’

‘Do both,’ he tells her. ‘These now and E another day.’

She turns to me. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think we should take them.’

But then, I’ve got nothing to lose.

Adam grins. ‘Good,’ he says. ‘Come over and I’ll make some tea with them.’

*  *  *

It’s so clean in his kitchen it looks like something from a show home; there’s not even any washing up on the draining board. It’s strange how everything’s the reverse of our house. Not just the mirror-image room, but the tidiness and the quiet.

Adam pulls out a chair for me at the table and I sit down.

‘Is your mum in?’ I ask.

‘She’s sleeping.’

‘Isn’t she well?’

‘She’s fine.’

He goes over to the kettle and switches it on, gets some cups from the cupboard and puts them next to the kettle.

Zoey screws her face up at him behind his back, then grins at me as she takes off her coat.

‘This house is just like yours,’ she says. ‘Except backwards.’

‘Sit down,’ I tell her.

She picks up the mushrooms from the table, opens the bag and sniffs. ‘Yuk! Are you sure these are right?’

Adam takes them from her and carries them over to the teapot. He tips the whole lot in and pours boiling water on them. She follows him and stands watching behind his shoulder.

‘That doesn’t look like enough. Do you actually know what you’re doing?’

‘I’m not having any,’ he tells her. ‘We’ll go somewhere when they kick in. I’ll look after you both.’

Zoey rolls her eyes at me as if that’s the most pathetic thing she’s ever heard.

‘I have done drugs before,’ she tells him. ‘I’m sure we don’t need a babysitter.’

I watch his back as he stirs the pot. The chink of spoon reminds me of bed time, when Dad makes me and Cal cocoa; there’s the same thoroughness in the stirring.

‘You mustn’t laugh at us if we do anything silly,’ I say.

He smiles at me over his shoulder. ‘You’re not going to.’

‘We might,’ Zoey says. ‘You don’t know us. We might go completely crazy. Tessa’s capable of anything now she’s got her list.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Shut up, Zoey!’ I tell her.

She sits back down at the table. ‘Oops,’ she says, though she doesn’t look sorry at all.

Adam brings the cups over and puts them in front of us. They’re wreathed in steam and smell disgusting – of cardboard and wet nettles.

Zoey leans over and sniffs at her cup. ‘It looks like gravy!’

He sits down beside her. ‘It’s fine. Trust me. I put a cinnamon stick in to sweeten it up.’

Which makes her roll her eyes at me again.

She takes a tentative sip, swallows it down with a grimace.

‘All of it,’ Adam says. ‘The sooner you drink it, the sooner you’ll get high.’

I don’t know what will happen next, but there’s something very calm about him, which seems to be contagious. His voice is the one clear thing. Drink it, he says. So we sit in his kitchen and drink brown swill and he watches us. Zoey holds her nose and takes great disgusted gulps. I just swig it down. It doesn’t really matter what I eat or drink, because nothing tastes good any more.

We sit for a bit, talking about rubbish. I can’t really concentrate. I keep waiting for something to happen, for something to alter. Adam explains how you can tell the mushrooms are right by their pointed caps and spindly stems. He says they grow in clumps, but only in late summer and autumn. He tells us they’re legal, that you can buy them dried in certain shops. Then, because nothing is happening yet, he makes us all a normal cup of tea. I don’t really want mine, just wrap my hands round it to keep myself warm. It feels very cold in this kitchen, colder than outside. I think about asking Zoey to go and get my coat from next door, but when I try to speak, my throat constricts, as if little hands are strangling me from inside.