Wild Song (11 page)

Hannu rowed over the sparkling sea. I could see the Wild School island now. It started as a dent on the horizon, then grew bigger, like a stone, then a boulder, a huge rock. I could see the chimneys of the building. I swallowed hard. What would they do to me? What would they say?

‘I thought it might be something like that,’ Hannu said eventually. Then, looking out to sea, he murmured, ‘Some people have scars on the outside and some have them on the inside.’ He lifted the oars then and let the boat drift. He looked round at me and nodded and I saw how tired he was – he had dark patches under his eyes. ‘When I first met you, Niilo, I knew you had lost your story.’ Then he took up the oars and dipped them into the water. ‘I didn’t know what your story was, but I guessed it was a hard story to carry. Those are usually the ones we forget. Or bury deep.’

I let him row. I felt in a daze, but weirdly light. Weirdly
okay. The island came closer and I could see the trees and the pier and the track that wound up from the pier to the school building.

‘Oi! Niilo!’

I swung round and peered towards the island. I could see the red-brick chimneys of the Wild School building. There was someone on the pier, waving.

‘It’s Riku,’ Hannu said, then nodded. ‘You have a welcome party.’ And the smashed glass inside my chest melted into butter, and I felt happy. I waved back.

‘Hey! Yo! You’re alive!’ Riku yelled. ‘It’s Niilo. He’s back! He’s alive!’ By this time more boys and staff had gathered on the pier. They started clapping. I felt like a celebrity, except tears were running down my face.

‘He’s alive! He’s alive!’ they were all chanting.

‘They missed you, Niilo. Didn’t I tell you?’ We were almost there. It was coming too fast. We’d reach the stone pier in no time. Okay, there might be a welcome party. There might not. But pretty soon Hannu would leave. I knew he would. And I would be left on the island. But suddenly that didn’t feel like the worst thing in the world.

‘Where did you get to?’ Riku was shouting. Then he ran through the water, kicking up a huge spray. He reached the boat and cheered, then under his breath said, ‘The grease saved you. You’re
alive
.’

I laughed. I couldn’t wait to tell him all about it.

‘Riku is a good guy,’ Hannu said, as the boat bumped against the bottom. ‘Bit of a wild child, but that’s no bad thing. You and him should be great friends.’ Hannu was manoeuvring the boat in towards the beach.

I remember what one of the staff members who had come to collect me – Sam – had said the day I came to the Wild School. He had called me ‘wild child’. I used to think that was a bad thing, but now it felt like something mysterious and exciting. I jumped over the side of the boat and waded ashore with Riku. He slapped my hand high-five, booted up more water and whooped. ‘Good to see you alive,’ he yelled. ‘What a hero! You did it. Wow!’ Then at the shore other people crowded round.

‘Thank God you’re not drowned, Niilo. Welcome back,’ said Marko, the woodwork teacher. ‘Welcome back to the Wild School.’

Staff and boys jostled round me. They patted me on the back. So many admiring wide-eyed faces were staring at me. Gaping at my torn shorts, ragged brown shirt and cut feet. ‘He didn’t drown!’ ‘Niilo’s back!’ ‘He’s alive!’ ‘Hannu saved him!’ ‘What happened?’ ‘Where has Niilo been?’ ‘Did the rescue plane find him?’ Their questions clamoured in my head. Elbows pushing to get a better look. Then I saw the boss man stepping forward and the boys clearing a path for him.

‘We are so glad to see you alive and well. And you, Hannu, thank you. You said you would find him, and you
did. Welcome back to the Wild School, Niilo,’ the head teacher said, reaching out to shake my hand.

I took his hand and shook it. I knew what was coming next.

‘Make the most of it, Niilo.’

I got a kick out of the awe that the staff and the other boys felt, knowing I had swum sixteen kilometres. (So I was told.) No great punishment was doled out, though lots of counselling sessions. Hannu only hung around for an hour or so, just enough time for a quick meal. It wasn’t exactly a welcome feast, but I was so ravenous I would have eaten salty porridge.

Of course Hannu was hailed as the real hero, but I heard how the boss said it would be much better for me if he quickly took his leave, how I’d become over-attached and stuff like that. ‘I’ll see you soon, Niilo,’ Hannu had said before the ferry took him away that very same evening. ‘And if you and your family want to come to the wedding, you’d be very welcome.’

I waved and waved, watching his ferry grow smaller and smaller, and a feeling of emptiness fell back into me. At that moment a low honk sounded on the breeze.

Aarne, my new key worker, came up and stood next to
me. ‘I love the wild song of the seals, don’t you?’ he said softly.

The seal honked again and the lonely feeling went. The black seal had come to the Wild School island - I
knew
it was him. Something lit up inside me and I felt a whole lot better. I would see Hannu again. Maybe I would go to his wedding? And the seal hadn’t disappeared like I’d thought it had – it had come all the way to the Wild School. It was still watching over me.

Me and Aarne walked up the track, through the pine woods and back into the main school building. ‘Welcome back to the Wild School,’ Aarne said, holding the door for me. I waited for him to pipe up with, ‘And make the most of it,’ but he didn’t. He went with me along the echoing corridor to my old room. When we got there I couldn’t believe it - sitting like they were waiting for me, just by the door, were my red Converse trainers. ‘Seems even your shoes missed you,’ Aarne said. ‘We found them washed up on the beach.’

I grabbed them and laughed. They were faded but still tied together. I looked around my little room. I had only been gone four days, but it felt like four months. Nothing had changed but it all looked so different. I said so to Aarne.

‘It’s you, Niilo,’ he said. ‘Nothing’s changed here. You have.’

The very next day, my mum turned up. She was hugging me and I  couldn’t believe how emotional she was being.
Every time I looked at her I imagined her screaming and holding me tight in a boat … a long time ago. My forgotten story kept throbbing in my head and I knew there were things I needed to ask her, but sitting in the office didn’t seem like the place for storytelling. I was kind of stunned anyway, seeing her suddenly turn up at the Wild School, and didn’t really know what to say to her. She just kept gazing at me and saying, ‘Thank God you’re alive.’ Then she went off later on the staff ferry, saying she would see me very soon, and how my brother missed me, and my father missed me. After she left, in a whirlwind, I felt a bit sad.

In the Wild School I had some explaining to do. Plus, there was some kind of payback scheme drawn up. The Finnish government had spent thousands of euros searching for me. So what was I going to do for Finland?

I had no idea. Swim in the Olympic Games maybe? But that wasn’t what they had in mind.
Community service
was what they meant. In other words: work. I told them I was only thirteen. Old enough, they said, to work in the fields. So off I went again. But it was different this time.

They put me in a team with Riku. He mucked about. He made faces behind the staff’s back. He spat, and swore and winked at me. But in between that, he worked, and so I did too. It was okay. I pulled a few weeds and harvested a few carrots and onions. ‘Me and you are best friends,’ he said, biting into a bright orange carrot.
‘Niilo, you are one serious hero.’ The way he said it, like he was making a speech, made it sound absolutely true.

‘I would have died of a heart attack without the grease, though,’ I told him. I could see how he looked proud about that. How he had been part of my escape.

‘Yeah, I know,’ he said. ‘And I didn’t want you to die. Because you and me’s best pals.’ I couldn’t help grinning at that.

Hannu must have put in a word about the drumming because I joined the Wild School band and, like you can imagine, it’s pretty wild. I thrash the drums till I’m sweating, and Riku – who is the singer in the band, and into techno punk – says it’s great having no neighbours. Nobody tells us to shut up!

Then there were the endless sessions of sitting in circles. Usually it was a riot. Boys broke chairs. They yelled. They punched at leather bags swinging from the ceiling. And we had to do these breathing exercises. But I didn’t need that stuff. I was fine. Sometimes I told the other boys stories, about seals and dolphins and magic elk pounding over snow. They said I was a brilliant storyteller now, because I’d survived four days in the wild on my own. I had survived the real Wild School, they said and looked at me like I was some kind of superhero.

But the staff still wanted me to sit in circles and talk all the same. ‘So, Niilo, would you like to tell us three things you don’t like about the Wild School.’

I could have given them thirty. ‘We’re stuck here. We’re forever picking berries. We can’t get off the island. Everything’s organised. We have to talk about our feelings. We have to put up with stupid folk. Like, some boys are seriously deranged here. And there’s no computer games. We only get to watch a film once a week, and they’re baby kind of films. And we have to—’

‘Thank you, Niilo, that’s fine,’ Aarne said. ‘And what about three things you
like
?’

‘Like the berries,’ I mumbled.

‘Thought you said you didn’t?’

‘I said, I didn’t like
having
to pick berries. I don’t
mind
picking them,  but I don’t like that I
have
to do it. There’s a difference. Do you get it?’

‘There’s no need to be cheeky, Niilo. Yes, I get the difference.’ Aarne took a deep breath, and carried on, ‘So, anything else you like?’

I made him wait, before admitting I liked the films on Friday night. Some of the films. Not the really babyish ones. Aarne nodded, and waited for a third like. ‘I learnt to swim,’ I said, and grinned.

‘You sure did. And you like that?’

‘I like that. I’m skilled at that.’ I gazed out of the window, at the clear blue sky, and thought about the seal. I wondered where it was. I had heard it howling in the night. I had lain awake half the night listening to the seal. When the boat had overturned, that seal had broken open my lost story. Now the image of the boat and the sea and the
screaming was never far away. Whenever I closed my eyes it was there. I had a story, but it was vague, like a dream. And though Aarne was an okay guy, I couldn’t tell him about it. So I tried to piece it together in my head, like a jigsaw, but so many pieces were missing. The sound of Aarne’s voice pulled me back. ‘What?’ I said, blinking at him. I must have zoned out. I shook my head. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘What did you say?’

‘Your mother said you could go home for two weeks’ holiday. She’d like you home, and your father and brother really want to see you. And we really encourage our students to take holidays, to spend time at home if they can. That’s a good thing, isn’t it, Niilo? To go home? And when you return to the Wild School, you can join the swim team.’ Aarne smiled across at me. ‘If it’s fine with you, you’ll be taken home tomorrow morning.’

So soon? I felt my chest tighten at the thought of going home. Back to the sterile house, Mum’s weeping, my dad’s cold silences, my brother’s successes. But this wasn’t my dad – well, I didn’t think it was. Maybe somewhere I had always known that? Now I felt it deep down inside. I’d had a real dad, and a twin, and they had both gone. And my mum hadn’t told me, or maybe she had always been trying to and I had never wanted to hear. If there was any reason to go home it was to find the other half of it – to get the truth. I was ready to listen now.

‘How do you feel about going home?’

‘Home?’ I shrugged. I felt a shiver shoot up my spine.
Where was home? My island had felt like home. ‘Dunno,’ I muttered.

‘If it doesn’t work out you can come straight back here,’ Aarne said. ‘Okay?’

I shrugged again. ‘Okay,’ I said, but it didn’t feel okay.

That night I couldn’t eat dinner, even though it was fried chicken, and even though I sat next to Riku and he kept nudging me and accidentally on purpose spilling salt all over the table. I felt my insides knot up. After dinner I didn’t join in with table tennis but sat at the side, biting my nails down to the quick. I watched Riku play and he was a devil at table tennis. I just sat and chewed the ragged skin around my nails. Riku slammed the table-tennis ball into my lap. ‘Give me a game,’ he said. Ordered, more like.

I shook my head. I wasn’t a great player.

But Riku yanked me up and thrust a bat into my hand. ‘I serve first,’ he said, and next thing I was at the end of the green table with this little white ball flying towards me. Miraculously my bat hit the ball. It sent the white ball flying back. That was a fluke. The next few shots I missed. ‘Flick your wrist,’ Riku yelled, ‘like you do with a
flick-knife
.’ Not that I had ever flicked a flick-knife, but I didn’t tell Riku that. I hit it that time, and I liked that
pop-pop
noise of the ball. ‘Hey! You’re ace at this,’ Riku yelled, and we were soon hitting it back and forward hard.

I could feel this red seething anger rise up through me and I smashed that ball so hard. Why did they lie? Even
knowing a really sad story is better than not knowing. It’s better than having no story at all. I whacked that ball.

A crowd had gathered around the table. Clucking Boy was clucking away. Everyone else held their breath. Somebody was counting … fifteen, twenty. We went to twenty-seven, then Riku slammed it so fast off to the side that I missed. The crowd cheered. Riku had won. He galloped round and round the green table with his bat in the air, whooping like mad. I was exhausted. But inside I was on fire. And I knew in that moment that more than anything I wanted to know the truth. I wanted my story. All of it.

Before I went to bed that night I blurted it out to Riku. ‘Do you get the feeling that you lost a story? I mean, your story? Like – there’s stuff about yourself nobody’s telling you.’

He looked at me. His scar wasn’t so scary. His dark eyes weren’t so hard. He nodded. ‘Like, finding your wild song?’

How did he know that? Was he psychic? My heart missed a beat. ‘Yeah, yeah … that’s it,’ I said, practically stammering. Then I suddenly got it. Hannu had been Riku’s one-to-one worker before me. It all made sense. ‘Yeah,’ I said again. ‘The wild song.’