Czytaj książkę: «Nobody Real»

Wake up like I hit the floor in a dream about falling.

Breathe.

Sunlight strokes my bedroom wall. Warm glow on deep scratches.

City sounds down on the street and the muffled chatter of a morning talk show from next door.

I close my eyes and lie still. Let the morning sink into me.

Hit my punchbag until my shoulders burn. The hiss of air with every connect. The chain link dancing in its bracket.

Shower. Turn the dial until the hot water stings my neck as I scratch the grout between the tiles with my claw.

Punisher T-shirt and my old jeans. Log into work and print out new job. Coffee. Thick and black.

Feel it hitting my veins as I stare out at the city. Glass buildings twinkle. A sleepy dragon takes off, yawning.

Another day in the not real.

Touch the typewriter. Say your name.

Grab the job printout. And gone.

We look like a handful of X-Men rejects.

A carriage full of forgotten friends heading to the jobs that nobody else wants.

The skinny ghost guy who works by the docks. The bubblegum waitress with the four chunky arms. Moose boy. The old trench-coated hunchback who’s always opposite me, muttering to himself. I know everyone’s face and nobody’s name. The unspoken agreement is: we don’t need to speak. We just sit, avoiding eyes, as the high number six train snakes out of the city between impossible skyscrapers, grounded space rockets and hundred-storey tree houses. Jungle-covered pirate ships and giant sleeping dogs. Chocolate factories and looping water slides. Hover cars whizz past us. A flying lion pulls a sparkling carriage. The city circus in full swing.

Another day. Another forgotten structure to destroy.

I feel the same crackle in my gut that I always get on a new job. A fresh building to break down to rubble. Crunch some kid’s discarded dreams into dust. Good at it too. Nobody destroys unwanted things better than Thor Baker.

Check my printout. Address is just on the other side of Needle Park. Four stops. Could’ve walked.

Close my eyes.

Alan. Everyone needs help. It’s good to talk.

Ball my paws into fists. Yeah. It’s good to talk.

But it’s so much better to smash.

The street is narrow.

Terraced houses with small, square front yards and shallow bay windows. One of those normal streets in among the madness. This won’t take more than a few days.

I don’t see anyone, but I can hear Billie Holiday through an open window and there’s the warm, soapy smell of fresh laundry. Printout says number seven. Odd numbers are this side.

It’s a bit like your street. Coral’s street. Different name, but familiar. Where are you now?

Have you already left for school? Outside the gym with everyone else? People swapping last-minute quotes and pretending they haven’t revised? You standing silent, telling yourself it’s time?

There’s a little inky black cat on the low wall outside number nineteen. It looks at me with a tilted head, trying to work out if I’m a threat. A boy with bear arms, carrying a backpack.

I step forward, reaching out to stroke it, but it jumps down and scampers away behind two grey bins.

“Screw you then, kitty.”

The cat pokes its head out and stares. I stare back.

“Didn’t really want to stroke you anyway, fleabag. Might eat you later.”

Carry on walking. Can’t wait to start smashing now. Seventeen. Fifteen. Thirteen. Check my bag. The chipped sky-blue of my trusty helmet. If I properly go for it this morning, might even take the afternoon off. Go to the river or something. Eleven. Nine. Yeah. That’s a plan. Stop.

Look at the house.

And feel a wrecking ball hit my chest.

The clock ticks.

Ten minutes in

and my page is still empty.

All around me, a gym full of people, sitting in rows, heads bobbing like a gridded flock of feeding birds, speed-scrawling answers to questions we’ve spent months preparing for.

Every few breaths, a head will pop up, like it heard something. The distant call of that great idea. That one quote that could turn forty UCAS points into forty-eight.

This is it.

Final exam. Sixth form’s last supper.

Scan the room. Mouth everyone’s name.

Most of us have been at this school since we were eleven. Some of us even went to the same primary school. How many memories do we share?

Izzy Maynard. Tolu Clarke. How different are mine to yours? Eli Hanson. Hardeep Khan. How does it work? So many versions of everything that happens. Everything that happened.

I remember play fights; you remember getting punched. You remember lunchtimes packed with hide-and-seek; I remember hiding in the craft cupboard and people forgetting about me.

We all remember laughing when Simon Harris tripped and threw pink custard over dicky Mr Page.

When you think about it, it’s thirteen years. More than two-thirds of our lives so far sharing the same space and, after today, most of us probably won’t see each other again.

We’ll say we will, but we won’t.

Maybe accidentally in town, one random summer Saturday.

Or five years from now, on a train platform at New Street, heading in different directions.

Or maybe in middle age, at some badly soundtracked class reunion when we’re all swollen or wrinkled or both and crying into our gin and tonics about how we chose the wrong path. Isn’t that just a little bit weird? Has anyone else in here even thought about it?

Sean is four across and two in front. I watch him scribble, then pause, scribble then pause. Scratching his head. Questioning himself, whether he’s following the right thought.

Cara is two across and three in front. Even from behind, the calm in her slender shoulders is clear.

Prepared. Sure. Tattooing her future on to paper. Ready for the rest of her life. When she’s finished, she’ll look back, checking in with me. That things are going to plan.

I look down at my page.

Still empty. Still waiting.

I know what I’m supposed to do. And I know what I want to do.

Last chance.

My pen tip scratches the blank paper. Like a claw.

And then I feel you.

For the first time in years. Watching me. Knowing my thoughts.

I look up.

Across the room.

And there you are.

Outside.

The tinted glass facade of reception.

Me, reflected, sitting on the low brick wall, backlit by a fuzzy white afternoon sun.

A life-size, full-page panel. Top left, one thought box.

I did it.

My pen is still in my hand. I actually did it. Can’t be undone now.

No more school.

No more lessons.

No more sawdust-dry assemblies.

No more cafeteria parade.

Nearly seven years spent shuffling around this place, nodding at teachers, passing notes, hanging back in cross-country, swapping homework. Come September, somebody else will sit where I sat. Use my locker. Answer the questions I would’ve answered … And a new crop of wide-eyed Year Sevens will step on to the secondary conveyer belt, just as we step off. Into our futures.

My skin is tingling, my whole body buzzing like a light bulb.

And there you are. Behind me. Your reflected silhouette. Bigger than I remember. Broader. Just me and you in the frame. “I did it, Thor.”

Your name is honey in my mouth.

The sliding glass doors of reception part and you’re gone.

Cara skips out, arm in arm with Leia and Naomi, like a half-Chinese Dorothy and her friends, off to Oz. A stream of other sixth-formers follows them, squinting as the sunlight hits them. I stand up, and wait for her to see me.

“What the hell, Mars!” she shouts, breaking off from the others and walking over. “How do you do it?”

We’re the same height, but my dandelion Afro gives me a few extra centimetres. Cara lifts her arms in celebration and a strip of smooth, pale midriff shows itself above the edge of her skirt.

“How’d you finish so quick?”

I pull my blouse away from my stomach and shrug back. “Said what I wanted to say, I guess.”

She smiles. She has more teeth than she needs, little white overlapping roots that on anyone else would look weird, but on her look like evidence of intelligent design.

“Marcie Baker, super-brain,” she says, and we hug. I close my eyes and breathe her in.

Honesty, confidence and ambition. That’s Cara. Since forever.

“We did it, Mars,” she says over my shoulder and squeezes me with her thin arms. I can feel her little pointy boobs pressed against my fuller chest.

“Yeah.”

People are scattered down the wide school driveway, hugging and hi-fiving each other. Sean, Mo and Jordan are tearing pages of revision notes into confetti over the bonnets of teachers’ cars. Jordan already has his tie around his head. Cara lets go of me and wipes her eyes.

“I feel like I can breathe again, you know?” Her sharp bob shines like black ribbon. “I can’t wait for uni! We’re gonna have so much fun! Did you do the ‘role of women’ question?”

I look down at our feet. Her crisp white Vans. My battered Chuck Taylors.

“Yep.”

Then she screams. Like a proper animal-type scream, head thrown back, arms stretched out. Someone else behind us takes their cue and screams, then someone else, and someone else, like car alarms triggered by each other, until I’m watching a school driveway full of A-level English students howling at the sky like wolves.

The pack starts to move towards the main gates.

“Everyone’s going to Jordan’s,” says Cara.

“Cool,” I say.

She flashes a knowing smile. “You’re coming, Mars. Don’t you dare even start.”

I nod. “OK.”

“We did it, Mars! It’s done!”

Nod again. It’s done.

No undoing it now.

What looks like half our year is sprawled across Jordan’s big back garden, like a sixth-form Where’s Wally? Shirts are undone. Cigarettes rolled. Detention memories and impressions of teachers are shared. Miss Langley’s cleavage. Mr Kelsey’s breath. Stormzy’s “Shut Up” pumps out through open French doors.

Some people managed to get boxes of wine and cans of Red Stripe from the outdoor, Old Mr Thomas serving teens in school uniform as a “fuck you” to the new Tesco Express.

I sit in the shade of the big oak tree, on a cast-iron garden chair, making cloud prints on the stretched cotton of my navy skirt with the wet bottom of my glass.

I can’t tell whether I feel light or heavy. Have I let something go or picked something up?

I scan the party, looking for you. Like you might actually be here. Stupid.

Cara’s on the grass, part of a captive horseshoe audience listening to Sean tell a story. His untucked shirt hangs open off his bony shoulders. His limbs have got longer this year.

“You remember, Mars? How mad they were?” he says, looking over, smiling. Audience heads turn my way. I wasn’t listening to the story at all.

“Yeah,” I say, “course.”

Sean waits a second for me to say more, then just dives right back into the narrative, taking his audience with him.

Nabil and David are trying to scale the concrete garage at the bottom of the garden, their shirts long discarded, shoulders gleaming with a sheen of sweat.

I scoop up my stuff just as Nabil gets to his feet on the garage roof like he conquered a mountain.

“I’m gonna jump!” he says. “Somebody film me!”

As people turn to watch, I walk inside.

Jordan’s mum’s downstairs bathroom is easily the most glamorous bathroom I’ve ever been in.

From the waist up, the entire wall in front of me is mirror, the sink a chunky white porcelain square set into the glass. The shower cubicle to my right is as big as our entire bathroom, the white towels neatly stacked in a pyramid on the shelves to my left look like they’ve never been used, and it smells like a swimming pool.

I drop my stuff and stare at myself. My uneven ’fro is wilting. My school blouse grips my chest like my skirt grips my hips. “Full bodied”, that’s what Coral said, the day she took me for my first proper bra fitting. Standing in the Selfridges changing room, arms out like a new prisoner. Remember it felt like I’d gone from nothing to too much, in one summer. Like my body was some fast-tracked puberty experiment. Cara’s face when she came back from France. She wanted to be the one who got boobs first.

There’s nothing more attractive than a full-bodied woman, Coral said. Just look through history, real history: full-bodied women are nature’s queens.

Not really the most humble way to describe yourself in Freshers’ Week though, is it? Yeah, hi, I’m Marcie Baker, I’m from Birmingham, I’m into reading and films, I used to draw a bit, oh, and I have the attractive, full body of a natural queen.

Something about this mirror having no edge makes it feel less like looking at my reflection and more like staring at someone else. A nearly eighteen-year-old girl.

I make myself smile and she smiles back. Smooth cheeks, more dark freckles than a face needs. The gap between her two front teeth is big enough to be embarrassing. An unwanted hereditary gift from a woman long gone.

I close my eyes. And breathe.

“You look older.”

My body stiffens.

You’re standing behind me, big enough to almost completely block the door.

I can hear muffled laughter from outside.

You step forward. The light hits your cheekbones. Your hero’s jawline. Is there a trace of stubble?

“So do you,” I say, keeping a straight face, trying to ignore the fact that I can feel my heart beat in my skin.

“I guess we both do,” you say. A shrug of your bear shoulders.

My fingers grip the seams of my skirt. “What are you doing here, Thor?”

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

I swallow and watch your eyes scan my reflection up and down.

“You can’t be here.”

Your eyes meet mine. “Says who?”

Then we just breathe and stare at each other. How long has it been?

“I did it, Thor.”

Your wicked smile.

“I saw.”

“Mars?” Cara bangs on the door and you disappear.

“Mars? You OK?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just washing my hands!”

I push the lever on the swan-neck tap and swill my face with cold water.

The empty space in the mirror.

“You sure you’re OK? You look kinda pale.”

Cara’s concerned face, her cheeks slightly flushed from cheap wine.

“Yeah, I just feel a bit off. I didn’t eat. I think I’m gonna go.”

“You want me to come with you? We could get chicken?”

“Nah, I’m good, you stay, have fun.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Message me later if I miss anything.”

Her expression turns sheepish. “Nothing’s gonna happen. I’ve left it too long. He’s oblivious,” she sighs. “That ship has sailed.”

I smile and poke her stomach. “Maybe, but you’ve always been a strong swimmer.”

She hugs me again. “I love you, Marcie Baker.”

“I love you too, Cara Miles-Yeung.”

Our bodies shake with laughter and I go to squeeze her, just as she pulls away.

The bin men haven’t been.

One black bag leans on the wall under the hedge with a trail of its guts on the pavement. A bloated green tea bag, a clump of brown rice, the wilted carcass of a red bell pepper. It’s a miniature art installation made by a fox.

I step over the exhibit, through the gate and see the sign. It’s one of those cheap banners you buy from a card shop. CONGRATULATIONS! in somebody with zero style’s idea of exciting letters. I can hear Stevie Wonder singing inside. Coral always makes an effort.

Think of the end of Jurassic Park when the T. rex is roaring as the torn banner ripples down from the ceiling. Close my eyes.

You came, Thor. I needed you there and you came.

Nobody knows. Only us.

Open my eyes. Tear down the banner. And go inside.

Dusk. And I’m literally buzzing.

If you could press mute on these busy city streets and lean in, you’d hear my body crackling like a plasma ball.

I crossed over. To you. You saw me. There. In the real. And I helped.

You know I did.

At the lights, I lean on the stop sign as a fifteen-metre white limousine rolls past. Across the street, a line of five black-suited yakuza sit in the neon window of a noodle bar, slurping in unison, their dark sunglasses hiding their eyes.

The house is the bridge. Coral’s house. Has it always been there – just across the park – this whole time?

Walking in. The hall. The stairs. Your bedroom door. The heat in my chest.

A foghorn.

I look up and see a World War II German Royal Tiger tank waiting at the red light. The top hatch creaks open and a small man wearing military uniform and a white moustache as big as a broom head starts barking unintelligible orders.

I cross the street.

Why now? Why do I find the house now?

I stop on the corner. The grinding tread of the tank behind me. The neon of the noodle bar.

The fade.

Ten years since you made me. Six since you sent me away.

I finally have a new way to reach you.

And I have to knock it down.

The bin bag is still there outside next door.

The door is closed and I don’t hear anything from inside. Why wouldn’t they just take it to the rubbish chute? I’m not doing it. Not my job.

Inside.

Boots off.

My head is swimming. It happened. I was there. With you. Through the house, that I now have to destroy.

Alan. Unresolved feeling will fester, Thor.

No shit.

Who can I tell?

No one. No one can know, Marcie. Just me and you.

The need to see you pulls me to the table. The old typewriter smiles. Like it knows.

Like it knows.

You’re drying a dinner plate.

Coral stands next to you, washing the last of the dishes. Her Lauryn Hill MTV Unplugged album is playing from the living room. She hums along as she washes.

You thank her for dinner and for the banner and the cake. She tells you not to be silly and offers to drop you off wherever Cara and the others are. You tell her you’re tired and that you’re just going to watch a film and, as she passes you the pan, you notice a mobile phone number inked on the back of her hand.

You ask her if she realises that it’s nearly ten years since you moved in with her. Coral drops the sponge. Of course she remembers it, she says. She remembers it like it was yesterday. She tells you that becoming your legal guardian is the best thing that ever happened to her.