Ostrich: A Novel (20 page)

“It makes it feel like it’s someone else’s.”)

There are no more clean bedsheets in my cupboard which means once I’ve cleaned myself up I have to go downstairs to the utility room, which I haven’t been into since Mum’s photo habit got out of hand. I negotiate the landing in darkness because it’s 04:12 and because I can. The carpet feels like sand between my toes, and when my foot touches down on the cold smoothness of the lino at the bottom of the staircase, I pretend I’m stepping onto Letchmore Pond. The whole way down the corridor I imagine that the ground could give way beneath me at any moment, and when the door rears up at the end of it I feel something in my stomach that’s suspiciously close to Disappointment. The room beyond is the kitchen. There is no mistaking this, on account of the pool of color that bleeds under the utility room door.

The light is on in the darkroom. Which is weird.

I try the handle with my middle finger, pressing down as hard as I can at the most hygienic point, but nothing gives, so I inch away from the fulcrum and try again. Finally, after several unsuccessful attempts, I am forced all the way to the end of the lever (to a billion billion). However, when the handle does at last give way I realize the door is locked, which in this house we don’t believe in. All of the keys in the house are kept in the key box, which is tacked to the kitchen wall next to the empty spice rack because one summer Dad was really into attaching stuff to other stuff. The word
KEYS
is carved into the front of the box (so as not to discriminate against blind burglars), which is shaped like a house in microcosm (so as not to discriminate against illiterate ones), and when I unhook the latch and the door swings open I have my pick of a dozen sets. Everything, in fact, except the one I’m looking for.

I find the key I’m looking for while I’m picking the lock on the utility room door with a paperclip I got from the clay frog on the windowsill. It’s already in the door, which has been locked from the inside.

“Hello?” I ask the door politely, in the same voice I use to answer the landline.

No one says anything.

“Who’s there?” I inquire louder, pressing my ear against the wood.

The answer is the same (i.e., silence). But this time the workings are different. This time it sounds like someone saying nothing.

“Hidden somewhere in that room,” I say (courageously) to the intruder I’m now convinced is in the darkroom, “are two
things. The first thing is a tiny piece of radioactive material, and the second is a Geiger Counter, which I’ve attached to a diabolical mechanism, a bit like the one in the board game Mousetrap.” I pause to give him the chance to give himself up, which he doesn’t take. “This is your first and final warning. Your chances of survival are increased twofold if you open the door so I can observe you.” I pause again, this time for effect. “You have until I count to twelve, because, luckily for you, I don’t believe in round numbers.”

A dozen Mississippis later, the only sound inside the darkroom is the simple subtraction of someone holding their breath.

“Right,” I hear myself announce. “I’m coming in.”

I pick up the Get Well Soon card next to the clay frog. It’s from Aunt Julie and Uncle Tony. I open it to the message (
Feeling ruff?
) and slide it under the utility room door to catch the key with, which is a trick I learned from a spy film that wasn’t James Bond but thought it was. “It’s got a dog on the front,” I explain to the intruder. “With its leg in a cast. Cos I had an operation.” I take the paperclip and set to work dislodging the key. “On my brain,” I add, nervously. “I’m getting better now, but you still can’t fight me, okay. Agreed?”

“ … ”

“If you agree, then don’t say anything at all for six seconds,” I command. Then I count twenty-four Niles. Then I jiggle the paperclip in the lock until I feel it loosen its grip on the key. With a nudge, I set it free and wait for it to rattle on the floor. But the noise never comes.

I can taste loose change in my saliva.

Gravity has stopped working.

Which would probably seem more remarkable if I didn’t already know it was about to.

My whole body tingles like one big funny bone. I can feel myself shrinking inside it.

I don’t know how long I’m away, except it feels like every second I’ve ever saved. When I come back around, I’m in bed, with Mum and Dad hovering over me, their brows furrowed like storm clouds. I try to ask what happened, but it comes out as a single word without vowels in it that isn’t rhythm. There’s still the taste of copper on my tongue, which is tender and swollen. I’ve bitten halfway through it.

“You had an event,” says Mum, like she’s somehow understood me. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

I open my last saved version and scroll through from the start. In no particular order, I remember the following things: a sports-day race, the blood thumping in my ears the moment before the moment I realize I’m going to win, like the numbness that comes the second before you realize you’ve burned yourself, the taste of soap, Mum telling a joke backward because she’s forgotten the start, walking past a lamppost at the exact moment that it lights up, the first time I see identical twins, sneaking downstairs during a dinner party and eating an olive that I think is a grape, the shock I feel before the realization that I like olives, a power cut, Dad putting the flashlight in
his mouth so his cheeks glow red, my first swear word and the shape it makes of my mouth, a piece of graffiti on the side of a railway bridge that says
GIVE PEAS A CHANCE
, Mr. Brown accidentally saying erection results in History, a small boy with the same name as me sitting on his uncle’s shoulders and peering into a casket … I skip to the end.

“I was in bed.”

“Th-th-that’s right,” says Mum.

“What’s today?” asks Dad.

“The day before tomorrow.”

“And what day’s that?”

“Monday.”

He looks at his watch, then shows it to Mum. Over their shoulders, the sun is rising. “And what’s the day after today?”

I consider my answer carefully.

“Today.”

The day after yesterday is Tuesday, which is the day of our first exam.

“If you don’t know it now, you’ll never know it,” says Mr. Carson smugly to no one in particular outside the sports hall, while everyone fights over formulae (correct plural form) like ducks over bread crusts. I partake halfheartedly in the feeding frenzy. Pre-exam etiquette dictates that I pretend to be panicked and tell people I’m going to need it when they wish me good luck. However, secretly I am supremely confident (because Maths doesn’t require what the school counselor calls Emotional Intelligence, hence the expression Safety in Numbers).

I finish the exam with fifty-four minutes to spare, which gives me time to check through my answers and work out my grade (minimum: 92%, maximum: 100%). After this, I still have half an hour to kill, not including the extra time that I’m allowed if I want it, so I look around. In the adjacent aisle Simon Nagel has the exam paper held up to the sports hall ceiling like a shopkeeper checking for forgeries. He tilts his head back underneath it and inspects the light dripping through it as though he hopes the real questions will reveal themselves (which they don’t). Maths is his worst subject, because the questions are almost never about Nazis. He starts chewing on a pencil, which probably isn’t kosher. In front of me Blowjob Frogley tucks a wisp of hair behind a totally unremarkable ear. Ever since she had the operation to pin them back, people have started to forget why they called her Blowjob in the first place. Now everyone assumes it’s because she does them, which is why she gets invited to so many more parties than she used to. Six seats in front of Simon Nagel, David Driscoll coughs. It is crisp, clear, and mucus-free. He is only doing it because no one can prove he doesn’t have to. Behind me, someone returns it with a cough of their own. To my right, someone blows their nose. In seconds, there’s a chorus of cold symptoms bouncing off the brickwork. It is a pointless rebellion, but maybe that is the point. It almost sounds like bird-song.

I look around the whole sports hall and focus on each one of my classmates in turn. How we do in these exams, Mr. Clifford always tells us in Assembly, will determine our paths in life. Finally, I think I understand something. We are the form
that our Fates have taken. We are the forces beyond our control. (Destiny is just another word for living in the moment.)

In the seat between Beckie and me isn’t Chloe Gower. Her exam paper lays facedown on the desk, where it remains untouched until time is up and Mr. Carson collects it and shuffles it together with the others like a Joker he needs for a trick. This ritual repeats itself in Geography, Science, and French (Written), but on Thursday, when Miss Farthingdale hands out the History paper, she skips Chloe’s place altogether.

Thursday afternoon I get off the bus home early at a stop I’ve only ever seen before through a window. (Sometimes when I look at things through glass it can feel like they’re on TV.) I ring Chloe’s front doorbell four times before Jessica answers. She seems surprised to see me, but in a good way, and I believe that she’s sorry when she says she’s sorry but Chloe’s not in.

“Where is she?” I ask.

By way of a response, Jessica ushers me into the house and shuts the door behind me. Mounted on the back of the front door is a cardboard sign. At the top of the sign in black felt-tip is a heading:
WHERE ARE YOU?? BOARD VERSION 2.0
. With three lines (two vertical, one horizontal) the board is divided into four sections, which are labeled
IN, BACK SOON
(i.e., before next meal),
BACK LATER
(i.e., don’t lock up!!!)
, and
OUT
(indefinitely)
. Attached to the
WHERE ARE YOU?? BOARD
are half a dozen wooden clothes pegs, each one individually painted with the name of the person they represent, in a manner (I assume) that
showcases an aspect of their personality. Chloe’s peg is pink and glittery. It is in the far column,
OUT
(indefinitely)
, alongside
WILF, SUSIE R.
, and (to my further surprise)
SUSIE B.
, which is also pink and glittery.

“She’s at her mum’s,” explains Jessica. “But you’re welcome in for cake and ice cream.”

I am about to do with the offer what Madame Berger has trained me to do with all things irregular (and decline it) when I happen to notice the rest of the board.
DAD
is back soon (i.e., before next meal) and
ELLA
is back later (i.e., don’t lock up!!!), but nobody is
IN
. This is because, I realize, Jessica doesn’t have a peg. Which makes me feel sorry for her.

“Do you have any fruit?” I inquire.

Jessica serves me my banana on a plate with a knife, and for a second I think she is going to make banana butterflies like Mum used to before I asked her to stop because I was too old for them, but then she explains that the knife is to help me peel it because it’s from the fridge. So I teach her the way monkeys peel bananas, which is simply to pinch the black bit between your thumb and forefinger and let the fruit reveal itself like a flower in bloom, which is much more efficient. This, I explain, is a good example of where evolution has hindered us. Most people have never seen a banana in its natural habitat. They think they come from supermarkets and that the stem is a handle put there purely for their convenience. (This is pretty much the biggest single problem with people as a species.)

“Wow,” says Jessica, watching me eat from across the breakfast bar, a marble peninsula in the middle of the kitchen joined to the mainland by a cavernous chrome sink unit. “I think you just changed my life! I see I’m going to enjoy having you around.”

“Say what, now?” I say.

“Well,” she says and smiles, “it can’t be long before you’ve got a peg of your own.”

Suddenly, I feel a rush of heat in my cheeks. My stool wobbles. When I look down, the kitchen floor is lapping at my feet.