They Do the Same Things Different There (31 page)

The skylight got dusty. And looking up through it on her bed, the little girl couldn’t tell what was dirt on the glass and what were liver spots in the air.

The little girl was really too little to reach the skylight. Mother would have to clean it for her. But Mother would sometimes get distracted, she might sit downstairs in the kitchen all day and drink and smoke. Mother went through a lot of these distracted phases. And the little girl found she could get to the skylight—so long as she was standing on tiptoe, and standing on her bed, and standing on some of those fatter books to lend her those few extra inches she needed. She wiped away the dust. She gave the glass a push. It moved within its frame. She realized that the skylight could
open
!—and she fumbled at the catch, it was stiff, she had to tug at it hard and the effort made her fall off her tower of encyclopaedias, she had to build it all up again and start over. She opened the skylight. She expected that straight away the sky would simply come flooding in. It didn’t.

If she pulled herself up with all her strength, the little girl could poke her head through the skylight. If she scrunched all her limbs together, really very tight, and thought about how very small she wanted to be, she could squeeze her shoulders through too. But her stomach was too big. So she began to leave her dessert. And, when that didn’t make her stomach shrink fast enough, she stopped eating her dinner as well, and her lunch, and her breakfast. She’d put the food in the bin when her parents weren’t watching. And very occasionally they did take notice of her, very occasionally she
had
to eat—but she didn’t keep the food inside for long, she’d go back up to her bedroom, cough it all up, wrap it in the old blanket and hide it in her cupboard forever.

One day she managed it—she was thin enough to climb up through the skylight. She almost wasn’t strong enough to do it, she felt so lightheaded and woozy, but she was a very determined little girl—she pulled herself out and into the moonlight, and the corners of the skylight cut into her sides as she did so, but she knew from now on it’d always be easier, she’d done it once and she could do it again, and it’d be easy, she’d just have to make herself a little bit thinner still. She sat on the tip of the roof, legs over both sides, and panted for breath, and tried to pretend that her body wasn’t hurting so much.

The sky was above her. Very close. She lifted her hand up to it, but it was still too far away. Now she could see how livid those liver spots really were. Now she could hear the sky breathing—and it wasn’t just the wind as she’d thought, that was just big puffs of breath, this was something softer and closer and private.

“Hello, sky,” she said. She didn’t know what to say, really. She didn’t like speaking to
anyone
very much. But the sky, of course, didn’t talk back—it couldn’t, because skies can’t talk—and that made the little girl feel a bit less self-conscious about the whole thing.

“You’re very old,” said the little girl. “Does it hurt to get so old?”

She thought about this for a while.

“I don’t want to get as old as you,” said the little girl. “To be as old and ugly as you. I don’t think that would be nice at all.”

The little girl thought about this too. And decided that maybe she’d been rude. “Sorry,” she said. “No offence.”

If the sky had taken offence, it seemed to forgive her. It wafted some light breezes at her, the little girl liked them, they were refreshing; she closed her eyes and opened her mouth and sucked them in, and she smiled. She stayed up there on the roof for a good hour or so.

“I’d better get back inside,” she said, at last, reluctantly. “I’ve got school tomorrow. You don’t have to go to school, do you? You’re lucky.” She shimmied her way back to the skylight, swung her legs over the side, hoped with all those puffs of breeze she’d inhaled she hadn’t put on too much weight to squeeze back through. She looked back up at the sky. She gave it a wave. “Night night,” she said. “I’ll see you again tomorrow.”

And, each night, the sky would be there, waiting for her.

Often she wouldn’t talk to the sky at all. She’d sit up on the roof, and pretend she was all on her own, on her own like normal—but then, once in a while, she’d look bolt upwards, and smile, as if to let the sky know that her shyness was really nothing personal. And at other times she’d chat, she’d spill her guts—that’s exactly what it would
feel
like too, that she was just letting rip, and everything in her head would just pour out; she wasn’t very good at expressing herself, she hadn’t much practice, so it’d all be higgledy-piggledy, her confusions, her fears—but the sky wouldn’t mind. It’d just listen patiently. It never interrupted. It never tried to walk away.

She told the sky her name. Not the name her parents called her—her
real
name, the one she shared with no one, the one that she carried secretly within her heart and never let out.

Sometimes she’d get angry at the sky. “You’re so big and powerful, but you won’t do anything to help me!” She wouldn’t raise her voice, she didn’t want her parents to hear, but her whispered fury was sharp and cut through the clouds. Sometimes she’d simply say, “You’re my only friend.”

She realized that for all the years she’d lived in her old house, she’d never once spoken to the sky there, or thought about it, or wondered if it were all right. It made her feel very guilty.

She’d count the liver spots day by day, and see how they’d begun to outnumber the stars.

When she was bold she tried to stand on the roof. Her feet slid upon the slates, and she knew that if she fell it’d be straight to the ground, and she’d be lost for good. But even standing, she couldn’t reach the sky. And so when she was bolder still, she tried to stand on tiptoe. These were the times when she didn’t mind much whether she fell to her death. But strain as she might, the sky was always out of her grasp.

“I love you,” she said one night, and she blushed hard at the admission, and felt so embarrassed that she had to crawl back through the skylight and she couldn’t even wave goodbye to the sky and she didn’t dare talk to it again for three whole days.

“I need you,” she said shortly after that, and that seemed so much like a greater confession.

“Help me, please,” she said one evening. And she got to her feet—wobbled a bit, because she was nervous, perhaps, or because the roof tiles were slippery after a typically sluggish spell of rainfall. She got onto her tiptoes. She raised her arms up high above her head. If only she were taller—but then, to be that, she’d have to eat more, and then she wouldn’t be able to get through the skylight, would she? “Please,” she said again, and then she
jumped
, as high as she could—and it wasn’t that high at all, it was hard to get a stable platform to leap from—she fell back again, and her feet nearly gave way, but she was all right, she steadied herself. And so she jumped again, arms still up, her hands clasping and unclasping, trying to get a purchase on
something
 . . . And she jumped once more, and by now she was crying, and she didn’t care how she landed, she didn’t care if she fell, “Please,” she said, “I need you, didn’t I say I
need
you?”

And her hand grabbed hold of the underbelly of the sky.

She was so surprised she nearly let go again.

She clung on for all she was worth. The sky had bent down for her, as far as it could go, but now it relaxed, it heaved itself back into position—and the little girl was swept up further into the air, maybe ten feet from the roof. She hung there, still crying, and she wasn’t sure whether it was out of fear, or relief, or whether they were just those tears of thwarted effort she didn’t need anymore but still had to come out.

The little girl dangled in the moonlit night. The moon didn’t shine as brightly in this patch of sky as it did in all the others. But the little girl just thought it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

She nuzzled into the sky. She was surprised to find it was furry. She began to stroke the fur with her spare hand. The sky began to purr.

She felt she could have hung like that forever. She wished she could. “I’ve got school in the morning,” she told the sky. “Double maths, and a spelling test. Bleurgh.”

So the sky lowered her back toward the roof.

And as the little girl dropped back down, oh, she couldn’t help it, she fell awkwardly, maybe it was just that she didn’t want to let go? In her fist she took a clump of sky with her, fur ripped from its skin. A gash was left in its belly. Just a little gash, but the sky was really so very old, and very weak. And the fur in the girl’s hand crumbled into flakes. And from the gash poured flakes too, raining down on her, she thought it was the sky’s lifeblood, “No, please no,” she said. But the flakes fell down anyway, and twisted gently in the breeze—and the sky was responsible for the breeze too, wasn’t she, was she sighing? was she gasping in pain? Like snow, but the flakes weren’t cold, they were warm as breath, and they weren’t white, they were the colour of twilight. “I’m sorry,” said the little girl, and she cried, “I didn’t want to hurt you, I just wanted to touch, I’ll never do it again!”

And at last the gash healed over, and the sky stopped shedding, it was over, the sky was still alive—and it gave a low rumble, maybe of relief, maybe of despair. “I don’t want you to die,” said the little girl. “Please don’t ever leave me.”

One day Father came home from work and he was happy, truly happy. He’d been given a raise and a promotion. “It’ll be a lot more money,” he said. He gave Mother a piece of jewellery, and the little girl some new toy or other. “I know things haven’t been great recently,” he said, “and I’m sorry. But this will be a fresh start. From now on, everything’s going to be different. You’ll see!”

He bought a better sofa for the sitting room, one made out of leather, and so deep the little girl thought she could sink within it and be lost forever. He bought a new dishwasher for the kitchen. And he looked up at the sky, and said, “Time to put paid to you too.”

By this stage the sky really wasn’t very well at all. It was shedding its flakes regularly now. Every morning Father would have to clear all the clumps of dead sky from off his car before he could go to work, he didn’t like the extra effort that required one little bit. He said the neighbours were laughing at him, although Mother quietly pointed out he’d never once even said hello to the neighbours, how would he know?—and Father retorted, “Well, now I’ll be able to face them if we get ourselves a brand new sky!” And then he smiled, because he was happy now, and this was a fresh start—sometimes he forgot about all that.

The man from the sky installations service came round at the weekend. He looked up at the sky, whistled through his teeth, and grimaced. “Some cowboy’s put that in,” he said. How long had they had it? Father said the sky had been there when they moved in. The man whistled through his teeth a bit more, and said he couldn’t install a new sky until the old one had been removed. “And you need to do it fast,” he said. “Nothing damages property quicker than a clapped-out old sky.” Father asked him whether he could remove the sky for them, and the sky installation engineer said that was a specialist’s job; he wasn’t authorized to handle a sky as clapped-out as that one. Luckily, though, he had a brother in the business, and his brother had a skill with old skies that was almost crafty. He’d give his brother a call, he’d sort it out. And the brother came over the next day.

“It’s dying,” said the brother, “no doubt about that.” Father had kept some of the sky flakes to show him, but the brother didn’t give them that much attention. “It’s dying, but skies are stubborn bastards, it could malinger on for years. We’ll have to give it a helping hand.” And so, twice a week, the man brought around to the house a pump and a nozzle, and sprayed acid up into the air. “It’s my own formula,” he said, “you can’t get this in the shops.” He told the family that the acid would work its magic, it’d burn the sky inside out. He advised them to take care of the side effects, the clouds might soak it up and start dripping acid rain. After his first enthusiastic bout with the spray gun, the man looked up at the sky, put on his rubber waterproof hat, and listened to it squawk with satisfaction. “Give it a few weeks,” he said, “and it’ll be toast.”

Every night the little girl went on to the roof. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m so very sorry.” And she cried. And sometimes the sky would cry too, and if it did, the little girl put up her umbrella to keep safe.

And every night too, Father went out into the garden. He’d stare up at the sky, study his handiwork. It was easier to see the damage against the blackness. To see the cracks, the burn red boils so ripe and ready to pop.

One night the little girl followed him outside. She didn’t like speaking to her father. He made her nervous, and made her stammer.

“Please don’t hurt her,” she said. “Please stop hurting her.”

She said it so softly she thought at first her father hadn’t heard, at first he didn’t seem to react at all. But then he looked away from the sky, and looked down at his daughter, and the little girl couldn’t read his expression. And perhaps that was because it was dark, but perhaps there was simply no expression to read.