Mira in the Present Tense (30 page)

“Why can't you do it in your own room?”

“I don't want to be on my own,” he shrugs, trying not to make a big deal of it. Sometimes I forget that Krish is younger than me. Suddenly, it feels like there's much more of a gap between us than two years.

I must have fallen asleep at some point during the night, but when I wake up the light is still on and Krish is still working on his picture. Dark rings circle his eyes. I peer over the duvet. It's amazing what he's done. Billions and billions of tiny pinhead-sized dots, starting with dark colors on the outside and getting brighter, spiraling into the middle. The dots in the center are oranges, yellows, and reds like fire, or the sun. When you look at Krish's picture, it feels as if all the energy he's put into it is leaping off the page at you, like swirling sparklers in the dark on bonfire night. It makes you breathless. I tell Krish that I think it's the best thing he's ever done. I ask him if he didn't get bored doing all those millions of dots, but he just shakes his head. I ask him if he was thinking about Nana when he was drawing it, but he says no; he wasn't thinking of anything at all except the colors.

“No sign of the charm?” asks Dad at breakfast.

I shake my head.

“Best not to bother Nana about it then,” says Dad, wrapping his arms round my shoulders and pulling me toward him. “It's a bit of a mystery that, but it'll turn up…when you're not looking for it anymore probably.”

“I'll always be looking for it,” I say.

“I lost Nana's heart,” I whisper to Millie as Pat Print reads out an example of…
that
was it…the pathetic fallacy. Millie shoots me her “What
are
you talking about?” look.

“Millie, tell everyone your Lockhart story,” shouts Ben, who's wearing his baseball cap back to front today.

So Millie reads it out.

“I really wanna read that book,” Ben booms.

“There you are, Millie. You can't get a better endorsement than that,” beams Pat.

“The problem is I still don't know what happens next,” sighs Millie.

“You know that expression ‘She's lost the plot,' well, that's just it. In real life most of us haven't got much of a clue what the plot of our life is. We might think we have, then something random comes at you and suddenly you're in another plotline…That's one of the joys of writing—you have a bit more control to pull the plot out of your imagination.”

“That's what I did for the beginning,” says Millie.

“Then carry on. In the end the characters will lead you to the plot.”

Millie nods.

“What do you mean, you lost the heart?” Millie whispers to me while Pat Print chats to Jidé and Ben.

“I've looked everywhere. I've lost it. Nana's silver heart charm, the one she gave me for my birthday.”

“Now who's brought in an object to talk about?” asks Pat.

Ben's sitting, ready and waiting, with his skateboard on his knee.

“Let's have it then, Ben.”

Ben adjusts his baseball cap, switches his iPod on loud, and starts rocking his skateboard back and forth, building up a rhythm before he entertains us with this one that he has definitely rehearsed. Because he's got his earphones on he has to shout even louder than he usually does above the heavy rap beat.

I have graffiti on me.

Once a month I need a makeover

because every time he wheels me out

to hit the cold gray concrete,

I get beaten up.

Sometimes

he carries me under his arm

to cross the white line

where the giant tires queue up,

but if no parent spies are looking out

I'll fly him across.

When we're together, there's no stopping us.

I feel the rhythm from his earphones pulsing through his feet,

twisting, turning, gliding, bumping, falling through the air.

I sit and wait all day for the sound of his feet,

the treads of his trainers on my wooden back.

Then we're off…flying down the track.

As he finishes, Ben hits his heel against the back of his board, and it seems to jump to order straight into his arms!

“I loved that, Ben. You've gone and seen the world from the perspective of a skateboard. That description of the road with the giant wheels queuing up and the parent spies is inspired,” gushes Pat Print. She is genuinely impressed.

Ben grins.

“That's one of the things you absolutely have to do when you write, see things from different perspectives. Anyone want to add anything?”

“I liked the way he performed it, he's a real actor,” Millie says, actually looking a bit embarrassed.

“It's all about finding your voice, that sort of confidence…Ben, you're a natural, but, let's face it, with your vocal chords you've had a head start on the rest of us.”

I laugh, which sets Jidé off too.

“What's so funny?” asks Pat Print.

“Mira's laugh.” Jidé smiles at me and this time I manage to keep my head up. “It's like it belongs to someone else.”

“Now you're getting there, Jidé, observing human behavior in action. I'll make a prediction, if you'll allow me, Mira. I have the feeling that one day soon that big laugh and that small speaking voice of yours will meet and that day will be a happy day for Mira Levenson.” Pat Print smiles at me.

“Jidé, how about you? Got anything for me?”

He nods and shows us a photograph of himself sitting between Grace and Jai. They have their arms wrapped round him and all three of them are smiling the same smile. He looks about six years old, but still he is clinging on to that piece of orange cloth. You can tell so many things about Jidé Jackson from this portrait. I wonder, if I didn't know his story, whether I would be able to spot it, that heart with bodyguard protection…Probably not.

My eyes are not like his or hers, not my nose, not my lips, not my chin, but no one looks too closely because I have dark honey-colored skin and one and one make two. It's amazing the things people say to Grace and Jai…about me. A woman on the 124 bus, when I was six years old, looked at Grace with her pale skin and her golden hair and green eyes and she looked at Jai with his dark brown skin and his black eyes and then she turned to Mum and said, “Look at those eyes. You so make the best-looking babies though, don't you?”

And my mum said, “What exactly are you talking about? Licorice allsorts?” She's outspoken like that, Grace.

“That's all I wrote,” shrugs Jidé.

“That's not all you wrote. What you've written is full of what we call subtext. I can read between your words a hundred other thoughts, left unspoken, but if you wrote those words your writing wouldn't be anywhere near as powerful as it is.” Pat pauses. “Any comments?” she asks.

Nobody says anything, but suddenly I feel the need, for Jidé's sake, to fill the silence.

“It's like my brother Krish…he's practically blond. Even though Granddad Bimal's Indian and Nana Kath's English, my mum looks really Indian, and my dad has dark hair and dark eyes, like Nana Josie, and I'm like, I am…” I burble on.

“Your point is?” interrupts Ben.

“My point is that Krish, well, he's blond and you wouldn't think he would be…and he's got these sparkly blue eyes like Nana Kath and people say stuff in front of him that really upsets him like, ‘Where did this one come from?' Or, when me and Krish were little, people thought my mum was child-minding Krish. Sometimes they even ask Mum if he's adopted or stupid stuff like, ‘What color eyes does the milkman have?' The funny thing about Krish is he looks exactly like my mum, but most people can't see that because he's white. Mum says genetics are a bit more complicated than what you learn in biology, which is where most people's knowledge stops.”

“And your point?” repeats Ben.

“I know what you mean, Mira,” says Jidé, elbowing Ben hard in the side.

“Man, what was that for?” yelps Ben.

“Millie, would you like to go next?” Pat smiles.

Millie shakes her head in that slow, determined way she has that lets you know she's made up her mind and she's not changing it.

“Mira. Did you bring me anything?” asks Pat, looking a bit confused and attempting to change the subject before it all gets out of hand.

“I wanted to bring you the charm Nana gave me, but the chain broke and now I've gone and lost it. It was a tiny silver charm in the shape of an artichoke. I'll read you what Nana said about it when she gave it to me, if you like.”

Pat Print nods.

So I flick back in my red leather diary to my birthday, the day Nana gave me the charm, which feels like years, not days ago.

“I've given you this, Mira, because most people, by the time they get old, have grown themselves tough little shells around their hearts…”

“Now, that's a true example of the pathetic fallacy,” says Pat Print. “What powers does Mira's nana think the charm holds?”

“I think it might be a symbol of how delicate love is,” answers Jidé, smiling at me. “She thinks adults learn how not to feel by protecting themselves from feeling too much.”

Pat Print nods, glancing from Jidé to me. She can tell that something's going on between us.

“What do
you
think?” Jidé whispers to me.

“I don't know. I just feel terrible because she's worn it nearly all her life and now I've gone and lost it,” I whisper back.

When Jidé talks to me now, I feel like everyone's eyes are on us, especially as he insists on sitting so close to me. It's terrible, but because of Jidé I can't really focus on Pat Print's carefully chosen closing words. It's obvious that she's rehearsed what she's going to say beforehand, but even so, Pat Print is no good at saying good-bye. Now she's telling us how proud we should be of the work we've produced and how she hopes to see us all in print one day. “No pun intended!” she laughs, that blueberry-colored rash starting to rise up her neck, as it does when she feels emotional about anything.

As we all leave the class, Pat Print calls Millie back, so I wait for her a bit farther up the corridor and inspect the trail of mud that Pat Print has left again, like her personal signature. I wonder where she walks to get so much mud on her shoes.

“What did she want?” I ask Millie.

“She asked me why I was so quiet today.”

“I didn't notice.”

“That's because you and Jidé were doing all the talking!”

“So what did you tell her?”

“I told her that I was quiet because I was so amazed to hear you speaking out like that…and I don't know…I've been trying to work out what's so different about you.”