I Am Out With Lanterns Read online

  ‘Ow!’ I look down to find Wren’s fingers digging into me.

  The class laughs and a boy I’ve never spoken to in my life says, ‘So gay, Milo.’

  Brilliant. Shit, it hurts. I feel pain severely and in colour: this one’s dark green with black edges.

  ‘Sorry,’ whispers Wren. ‘That’s her.’

  ‘Who?’

  As the pain fades, I realise that Mr Witheridge has a new student up the front.

  ‘Class, settle,’ he says. ‘This is Adie.’

  This girl, Adie, is nearly as tall as me with chin-length brown hair. It’s kind of wonky, as if she cut it at home with kitchen scissors. She’s got this cool way of standing – I notice because I’ve never been able to make standing look remotely good. She holds one arm above the elbow and juts out her hip. I can’t tell if she’s nice.

  Mr Witheridge motions for Adie to take a seat at the back. ‘Let’s hear a few of these stories, then.’

  But as Adie walks off, there’s a loud clatter behind me and all heads turn. Juliet is on her feet and then up on the desks. What’s she doing? The ceiling is low and she’s bent over awkwardly, trying to walk along and doing a terrible job. Her face is red. Maybe she didn’t come up with a story either and doesn’t want anyone to know. People are whooping as she makes her way along the desks towards the door. They swipe their laptops away from her feet. Arms go up to stop her falling on top of them. The noise in the room explodes. Juliet looks unsteady and wild. Mr Witheridge shouts, ‘Get down this instant, Jennifer!’ which is strange because that’s not her name. It’s chaos. I think she’s going to fall, so I stand up and hold out my hands. She grips them both and collapses onto me, sending us crashing against the glass wall. There are laughs and jeers as she swings open the door and runs.

  ‘You’re so gay, Milo!’ shouts Billy.

  More laughter. How did it become about me?

  ‘Shut up, all of you!’ Mr Witheridge yells.

  I take a seat again. That was a first for Billy.

  Wren puts her hand softly between my shoulderblades and gives me a smile I can’t decode, but the feeling of her hand there is nice.

  After class, Wren pulls me by the sleeve towards the lockers.

  ‘Bloody hell.’ She sounds so British when she says that. Everything is very bloody with Wren.

  ‘I know. Poor Juliet.’ I remembered after she left that I’ve seen Juliet lose it before. She’s one of the few people I can picture from primary school – the rest form an amorphous blob. She used to get angry. I don’t remember why. Sometimes she was put in one corner for having an outburst, and I was put in another for whatever I’d done that day. The corners were too far apart for us to become friends.

  ‘I’m not talking about her,’ says Wren. ‘Something amazing has happened. So, I decided not to draw Floyd any more. For a year.’

  ‘Why a year?’

  ‘Just listen. Last night I drew a random girl instead. And it’s her.’

  ‘Juliet?’

  ‘No! The new girl.’

  ‘Oh. Okay.’

  ‘Milo! Did you hear what I said?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘Isn’t that amazing? That I drew her? Okay, so I drew her with long hair and she has short hair, but it’s her! It’s her face!’

  ‘Um …’

  ‘And now she’s here, Milo!’

  ‘What, like you made her come here?’

  ‘Not exactly, stop being so … so …’

  ‘I’m not being so anything. Wait, is this a joke?’

  Wren rolls her eyes. ‘Don’t you think it’s incredible that, of all the random strangers I could have drawn last night, I drew the one who just walked into our English class? She popped into my head. Literally popped in!’ She stabs her temples with two fingers, kind of hard.

  ‘Popped in,’ I repeat.

  ‘Milo! Please get me.’

  I can’t stop saying the wrong thing. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘What have you got to be sorry for? Think about it – it’s incredible, right?’

  ‘Well …’ She’s staring at me. This feels confusing. Screw it, I’ll go for a straight-out, clean lie: ‘Yes, it’s incredible.’

  ‘You don’t mean it.’

  ‘I do! Wren, I really do.’

  She smiles and opens her locker. I’m so relieved this conversation is over.

  When I find Wren at lunch, she’s got one of the few tables in the main courtyard to herself and two brown bags in front of her that I suspect contain meat pies. My last conversation with her is still all over me like a rash. I’ve been thinking about her coincidence mathematically – it’s not like I could stop thinking about it because that girl Adie has been in all my classes since English. I take a seat.

  ‘Look, she’s over there,’ Wren says. ‘Having her fifteen minutes of fame as the new girl.’

  ‘I’ve worked it out for you. How many people do you think we’ve seen over the last few weeks?’

  ‘I’ve only seen you and my family. I hate people.’

  ‘I mean when we’ve been out – people we’ve passed in the street, by the river, in the shops.’

  ‘Oh God. Well, we tend to avoid crowds, but still … a lot.’

  ‘An actual number, Wren.’

  ‘But I’m bad at guessing. Okay, three hundred?’

  ‘Fine, let’s go with that. How many of those do you reckon were our age?’

  ‘Fif-ty? Don’t make me do maths, Milo, it makes me hyperventilate. Seriously, I can feel my chest tightening.’

  ‘Relax, fifty’s good. So, you wanted to draw someone last night –’

  ‘Ssshhh! She’s right over there and you’re being really loud.’

  ‘Sorry. As I was saying … you wanted to draw someone and it’s pretty well established that young people draw other young people. And it’s also likely that someone from your fairly recent memory would pop into your head. So that leaves fifty potential models, making it a one-in-fifty chance that you were going to choose the one you did. Now, we walked across a couple of suburbs, so let’s say there are six high schools that girl could have gone to. Which means the chances of the girl you drew being in our school is one over fifty times one over six, times one hundred, which is, wait … a 0.3% possibility.’

  I can’t tell from her face if she loves this or not, so I carry on.

  ‘But wait! I haven’t forgotten that there are two possible English classes she could have gone to, so now we divide 0.3% by two and get 0.15%.’

  Wren still isn’t speaking, or looking at me. There’s a password I have to say to unlock her. What is it? I’ll try an obvious one.

  ‘So you were right, Wren. It was a tiny chance. 0.15%.’

  ‘Bloody amazing! 0.15%.’

  ‘It’s easy maths, Wren. I’m not that amazing.’

  ‘I mean me drawing Adie is amazing!’

  ‘Oh. Y-es.’

  She bites into one pie and slides the other bag across to me. I stuff my mouth to stop myself from telling her that, by my calculations, drawing Adie is still twelve thousand times more likely than winning the Lotto.

  I’m calling Jean.

  I shouldn’t be calling Jean for two reasons. Firstly, Jean is over-over-protective, so I already know I’m not going to tell her the real reason I need to get out of school early. I hate lying to either of my mums, but after what happened in English, I’m definitely going to. Secondly, Jean will insist on closing her shop and coming to meet me. Even if I say, ‘Mum, I’m fine, I can walk home by myself,’ Jean will insist.

  I’m calling Jean.

  Jean’s on her way.

  I told her I’ve got one of my headaches. As soon as the lie came out, I started to get one of my headaches. It’s a dull told-you-so throb. Maybe I won’t even take a pill for it because I shouldn’t have lied to my mum. She’ll rub rosemary oil into my temples. There will be some kind of ginger elixir.

  I’m waiting for her outside the school secretary’s office. Carole, the
school secretary, has powdery skin like a peach and cropped grey hair. She’s going through a huge stack of papers, licking her index finger every three pages. It’s revoltingly mesmerising.

  Carole peers at me over the top of her glasses. ‘You don’t look good at all, Juliet. At all.’

  There’s nothing Carole enjoys more than a sick child.

  ‘Did you want me to call one of your …?’

  Carole’s sentence runs out because she’s not sure whether to say ‘mums’ or ‘parents’ and I think she’s afraid the word ‘lesbian’ will slip out.

  ‘It’s okay. I’ve already called my mum.’ I pause, then make it clear which mum I mean. ‘Jean.’

  My prediction is that within the next minute Carole will pull down her plastic shutters and be gone. Carole is afraid of Jean.

  The shutters have been down for ten minutes. Carole is probably round the side of the gym, pursing her pink treacle lips on a cigarette. She thinks no one knows.

  Jean walks in, glowing from the walk I’ve just made her endure. But I can’t pretend I’m sorry because I feel so much better for seeing her and, anyway, she’s smiling.

  I am a bit sorry.

  ‘Hey, baby. Let’s go.’

  At that moment, Carole’s shutters fly up.

  ‘Oh!’ says Carole. I see the moment her brain says, Smile at the black lady, Carole!

  ‘Hello, Carole,’ says Jean.

  Three years ago, on another occasion when I needed an emergency exit from school, Carole asked Jean if she was the nanny. She also asked Jean where she was from, and when Jean said ‘London, originally’, Carole said ‘But I mean before that’.

  Jean tore Carole into several long strips and watched her flutter to the floor.

  Jean is tall with dark brown skin and short afro hair that she dyes reddish. I’m short with light yellow-brown skin and out-of-control ringlet curls. People always assume that Tracey, pale and petite, is the real parent. The truth is that I can remember a time before Tracey was my mum, but there’s nothing in my head before Jean.

  Jean presses her hand on my brow; first her palm, then the back of her hand. ‘Let’s get you home,’ she says. As we walk out, Jean turns back to Carole and coolly says, ‘Thank you for looking after Juliet, Carole.’

  Carole springs up from her chair, ‘Oh! Yes! You’re welcome, Mrs … um …’

  My mum and I exchange a look as we walk down the steps to the street and put our arms around each other. We have met a lot of Caroles.

  I drew her and she appeared.

  It’s more than a little satisfying to be called a witch for five years and finally have a sense of my true powers.

  (Joke.)

  (Ish.)

  Obviously it’s not magic, but it’s not nothing either. I want to ask everyone around me what they think, but there’s no one I trust. And despite his sweet attempt to dazzle me with maths, this really isn’t Milo’s kind of thing.

  I only spotted Adie one more time after lunch, when she was coming out of the library and heading towards the Science block. I tried to find the guts to speak to her, but my guts reminded me that, without a script, the words ‘I drew you’ might slip out. Like ‘Great to meet you, Adie. I’m Wren. I drew you.’

  Lock me up and throw away the key, that sounds creepy.

  As I watched her disappear, I started to doubt my drawing. Maybe it isn’t even her. What if I’ve spent all day thinking that something amazingly profound has happened but then find I’ve remembered it wrong and the face in my sketchpad is someone completely different?

  That would be so like me.

  I need to get a better look at her.

  When the bell goes, I wait in the spot where I always meet Milo. He finds me and starts to walk off in our usual direction. Then he turns back.

  ‘Why aren’t you coming?’ he says.

  ‘I am. I mean I will. In a sec.’

  He frowns and looks at my boots. ‘Are you hurt?’

  God, he melts my heart sometimes. I laugh. ‘No. I was just having a look around.’

  ‘At what?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Actually, I can’t lie to him. ‘Well, it was that girl’s first day. Remember when it was my first day and you hung around for me?’

  ‘Yes.’ I wait for him to get it. After a few beats, he says, ‘You want to walk home with her?’ He looks confused. ‘Do you know where she lives? What if you don’t live in the same direction? What if she has something she needs to do after school? What if she’s already walking with someone else?’

  He makes an overwhelming number of excellent points.

  ‘I don’t know. I thought it would be … nice of us.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘Yeah, us.’

  He stands with me, fidgeting, and we talk about anything and nothing until the place is virtually empty.

  ‘Let’s just go,’ I say. ‘I guess we missed her.’

  When I look up at Milo, his eyes are twinkling.

  ‘Maybe someone rubbed out your drawing,’ he says.

  I shove him playfully and laugh, feeling all kinds of foolish.

  ‘Let’s go home via the high street,’ says Wren. ‘I need to pick up some more charcoal from the art shop.’

  ‘Sure. I guess. If you want.’

  Damn. The relief of exiting the school gates is short-lived when I picture the high street. I’m a magnet for the blue blazers who hunt there in packs. It’s not all of them who are dangerous, but because they all wear the same thing it’s hard to distinguish between who’s a prick and who’s a normal kid trying to get through his day. One pack includes Ben Brearley, who never leaves me alone.

  Ben Brearley’s very existence chews on my brain every day of every school term. I’ve got several alternative routes to and from school that I vary in order to avoid him. The start of the year is always dangerous because I haven’t had the opportunity to study his movements. It takes a couple of weeks to note the times he’s likely to appear in a certain area. Until then it’s like running the gauntlet.

  The way he bullies me is not the kind I can report. To take the risk of exposing him, I’d have to know I was going to be believed, otherwise I could make the bullying worse. How do I say that he stands over me or goads me or alludes to the terrible things that will happen to me? If I transcribed it, people would say it was autism making me see things the wrong way.

  Hey mate! Mind that shoelace – you could trip and fall in the road and end up under a tram. I’d hate for that to happen, Milo.

  That’s why it took me ten years to work out that he wasn’t my friend. Because of all the times I’ve been told that my thinking is wrong.

  Wren goes into the art shop. I know without taking a breath in that I’ll be hit by oil paints gone rancid in the air, the woodiness of fresh pencils, the ashiness of charcoal, crayons that smell like clay, the metallic odour of scalpels, the fresh pine of easels and the glueyness of new paper, and that I’ll want to walk straight back out. So I get my handkerchief and spend some time carefully tucking it into my sleeve with enough of it hanging out to hold against my nose. I’m just about to push the door open when it swings wide and Wren’s there.

  ‘Guess what?’

  I’m getting close to strung out, so I shrug.

  ‘I might get a job!’

  ‘Where? Why?’

  ‘Here!’ She waves at the woman behind the counter and takes my arm as we walk away from the shop.

  ‘When?’ I say.

  ‘All day Saturday and two days a week after school, but not till next month.’

  ‘But … that happened so fast.’ I look at my handkerchief, and the art shop door. I think about our normal Saturdays and the fact that we walk home together every day. I’m in danger of crashing over this. Only a month left. Why did this have to happen now, today?

  ‘Isn’t that good?’ she says.

  ‘No.’

  She laughs and turns to go, but her face does something strange – the smile drops off. She squeezes my ar
m and looks ahead. Right in front of us: two, four, six, eight blue blazers.

  Blue blazers and Wren’s new job and the smell of sandalwood and the clanking, grinding high street. This is bad.

  ‘Mate!’ says Ben. ‘How was your first day back at Povvo High?’

  I don’t answer. I don’t … breathe. Blue blazers and Wren’s new job and the smell of sandalwood and the high street; I can’t push a single thought away. They’re stuck together in my brain with static electricity.

  Wren leads me through the pack, but they surround us. We’re swept off to a side street by the blue-blazered rip-tide. They trap us in the middle and I can’t see over the crest. Every space we find, they fill. Wren throws words at them, angry little atoms, but they bounce off.

  ‘Calm down, freak show,’ Ben laughs. ‘We’re being friendly. I was just gonna remind Milo that I’m coming to his house soon.’ He puts on a baby voice. ‘Will you let me play with your Lego this time?’ Then he turns to his mates. ‘When we were kids, he wouldn’t let me touch it.’

  ‘Ahhh, the precioussss,’ says one of them. ‘He does look a bit like Gollum.’

  Their laughter crashes and slices. I don’t look at their faces but down at all the black shoes. I could reply: Your engineering skills were for shit, Ben, that’s why I didn’t let you play. But I’m too busy trying not to breathe in the scent of them, trying not to mind the warmth radiating from their bodies.

  ‘You’d share now, though, wouldn’t you, Milo? You know what I’d really like to borrow? Your mother. Slutty Jules.’

  ‘Oi. Shut your filthy mouth.’ Wren jabs her finger so close to Ben’s face that he lurches backwards. I should be defending Mum, but everything I want to say is stuck in my throat. I’m jostled by blue-blazered waves and my chest is tight. The boys close in around her, and I get siphoned out with a whack on the back of my head. My nose is wet; it could be blood or snot. I’m against a wall. If I run, they’ll get me; if they don’t get me, they’ve got her. My body wrings my guts like a dirty cloth.

  ‘What’s this?’ says Ben. He’s got Pop’s handkerchief. ‘Is this what you blow your massive emo nose on, Milo?’