Before I Die (19 page)

I turn over and press my face right into the grass; it pushes coldly back at me. I rake my hands through it, bring up my fingers to smell the earth. It smells of leaf mould, worm breath.

‘What are you doing?’

I turn round very slowly. Adam’s face is upside down. ‘I thought I’d come and look for you. Are you all right?’

I sit up and brush the dirt from my trousers. ‘I’m fine. I was hot.’

He nods, as if this explains why I have wet leaves stuck to my coat. I look like an idiot, I know I do. I also have my hood tied under my chin like an old woman. I undo it quickly.

His jacket creaks as he sits down next to me. ‘Want a rollie?’

I take the cigarette he offers and let him light it. He lights his own and we blow silent smoke across the garden. I can feel him watching me. My thoughts are so clear that I wouldn’t be surprised if he could see them blazing above my head like a neon sign outside a fish and chip shop. I fancy you. I fancy you.
Flash. Flash. Flash
. With a neon red heart glowing beside the words.

I lie back on the grass to get away from his gaze. Cold seeps through my trousers like water.

He lies down next to me, right next to me. It hurts and hurts to have him this close. I feel sick with it.

‘That’s Orion’s Belt,’ he says.

‘What is?’

He points up to the sky. ‘See those three stars in a line? Mintaka, Alnilam, Alnitak.’ They bloom at the end of his finger as he names them.

‘How do you know that?’

‘When I was a kid, my dad used to tell me stories about the constellations. If you point binoculars below Orion, you’ll see a giant gas cloud where all new stars are born.’

‘New stars? I thought the universe was dying.’

‘It depends which way you look at it. It’s also expanding.’ He rolls over onto his side and props himself up with one elbow. ‘I’ve been hearing from your brother about you being famous.’

‘And did he tell you it was a complete disaster?’

He laughs. ‘No, but now you have to.’

I like making him laugh. He has a beautiful mouth and it gives me the chance to look at him. So I tell him about the whole radio station ridiculousness and I make it much funnier than it really was. I sound heroic, an anarchist of the airwaves. Then, because it’s going so well, I tell him about taking Dad’s car and driving Zoey to the hotel. We lie on the damp grass with the sky massive above us, the moon low and bright, and I tell him about the wardrobe, and how my name has gone from the world. I even tell him about my habit of writing on walls. It’s easy to talk in the dark – I never knew that before.

When I’ve finished, he says, ‘You shouldn’t worry about being forgotten, Tess.’ Then he says, ‘Do you reckon they’ll miss us if we go next door for ten minutes?’

We both smile.

Flash, flash
, goes the sign above my head.

As we go through the broken bit of fence and up the path to his back door, his arm brushes mine. We hardly touch at all, but it’s startling.

I follow him into the kitchen. ‘I’ll just be a minute,’ he says. ‘I’ve got a present for you,’ and he disappears into the hallway and runs up the stairs.

I miss him as soon as he goes. When he isn’t with me, I think I made him up.

‘Adam?’ It’s the first time I’ve ever called his name. It sounds strange on my tongue, and powerful, as if something will happen if I say it often enough. I go into the hallway and look up the stairs. ‘Adam?’

‘Up here. Come up if you want.’

So I do.

His room’s the same as mine, but backwards. He’s sitting on his bed. He looks different, awkward. He has a small silver parcel in his hand.

‘I don’t even know if you’re going to like this.’

I sit next to him. Every night we sleep with only a wall between us. I’m going to knock a hole in the wall behind my wardrobe and make a secret entrance to his world.

‘Here,’ he says. ‘I suppose you better open it.’

Inside the wrapping paper is a bag. Inside the bag is a box. Inside the box is a bracelet – seven stones, all different colours, bound with a silver chain.

‘I know you’re trying not to acquire new things, but I thought you might like it.’

I’m so startled I can’t speak.

He says, ‘Shall I help you put it on?’

I hold out my hand and he wraps the chain around my wrist and does up the clasp. Then he threads his fingers with mine. We look down at our hands, together on the bed between us. Mine look different, entangled with his, the new bracelet on my wrist. And his hands are completely new to me.

‘Tessa?’ he says.

This is his room. With only a wall between my bed and his. We’re holding hands. He bought me a bracelet.

‘Tessa?’ he says again.

When I look at him, it feels like fear. His eyes are green and full of shadows. His mouth is beautiful. He leans towards me and I know. I know.

It hasn’t happened yet, but it’s going to.

Number eight is love.

Twenty-eight

My heart stumbles. ‘I can do that.’

‘No,’ Adam says. ‘Let me.’

Each buckle gets his absolute attention, then he slides my boots off and places them side by side on the floor.

I join him on the rug. I undo his laces, put each of his feet on my lap in turn and pull off his trainers. I stroke his ankles, my hand running under his trousers and up his calves. I’m touching him. I’m touching the soft hair on his legs. I never knew I could be so brave.

We make it a game, like strip poker, but without the cards or dice. I unzip his jacket and let it fall to the floor. He undoes my coat and slides it off my shoulders. He finds a leaf from the garden in my hair. I touch his dark curls, twine their strength through my fingers.

Nothing seems small with him watching, so I take my time with the buttons on his shirt. This last one condenses into a planet under our gaze – milky white and perfectly round.

It’s astounding that we both know what to do. I’m not even having to think about it. I’m not being dragged along. It’s not slick or knowing. It’s as if we’re discovering the path together.

I hold my hands over my head like a child as he peels my jumper off me. My hair, my new short hair, gets caught in static and crackles in the dark. It makes me laugh. It makes me feel as if my body is plump and healthy.

The backs of his fingers brush my breasts through my bra, and he knows, because we’re looking at each other, that this is OK. I’ve been touched by so many people, prodded and poked, examined and operated on. I thought my body was numb, immune to touch.

We kiss again. For minutes. Tiny kisses where he bites my top lip gently, where my tongue edges his mouth. The room seems full of ghosts, of trees, the sky.

Our kisses become deeper. We sink into each other. It’s like the first time we kissed – urgent, fierce.

‘I want you,’ he says.

And I want him right back.

I want to show him my breasts. I want to undo my bra and get them out. I pull him towards the bed. We’re still kissing – throats, necks, mouths. The room seems full of smoke, with something burning here between us.

I lie on the bed and buck my hips. I need my jeans off. I want to display myself to him, want him to see me.

‘Are you sure about this?’ he says.

‘Very.’

It’s simple.

He unbuckles my jeans. I undo his belt with one hand, like a magic trick. I circle his belly button with my finger, my thumb nudging at his boxers.

The feel of his skin next to mine, the weight of him on top of me, his warmth pressing into me – I didn’t know it would feel like this. I didn’t understand that when you make love, you actually do
make
love. Stir things. Affect each other. The breath that escapes from me is dazzled. He breathes it in with a gasp.

His hand slides under my hip, I meet it with mine, our fingers lock. I’m not sure whose hand belongs to who.

I’m Tessa.

I’m Adam.

It’s utterly beautiful not to know my own edges.

The feel of us under our fingers. The taste of us on our tongues.

And always we watch each other, check with each other, like music, like a dance. Eye to eye.

It builds, this ache between us, changing and swelling. I want him. I want him closer. I can’t get near enough. I wrap my legs round his, sweep his back with my hands, trying to pull him further into me.

It’s as if my heart springs up and marries my soul, as my whole body implodes. Like a stone falling in a pond, circles and circles of love ripple through me.

Adam shouts for joy.

I gather him and hold him close. I’m amazed at him. At us. This gift.

He strokes my head, my face, he kisses my tears.

I’m alive, blessed to be with him on this earth, at this very moment.

Twenty-nine

Blood spills from my nose. I stand in front of the hall mirror and watch it pour down my chin and through my fingers until my hands are slippery with it. It drips onto the floor and spreads into the weave of the carpet.

‘Please,’ I whisper. ‘Not now. Not tonight.’

But it doesn’t stop.

Upstairs, I hear Mum say goodnight to Cal. She closes his bedroom door and goes into the bathroom. I wait, listening to her pee, then the flush of the toilet. I imagine her washing her hands at the sink, drying them on the towel. Perhaps she looks at herself in the mirror, just as I’m doing down here. I wonder if she feels as far away as I do, as dazed by her own reflection.

She closes the bathroom door and comes down the stairs. I step into her path as she appears on the bottom step.

‘Oh my God!’

‘I’ve got a nosebleed.’

‘It’s pumping out of you!’ She flaps her arms at me. ‘In here, quick!’ She pushes me into the lounge. Heavy, dull drops splash the carpet as I walk. Poppies blooming at my feet.

‘Sit down,’ she commands. ‘Lean back and pinch your nose.’

This is the opposite of what you’re supposed to do, so I ignore her. Adam’ll be here in ten minutes and we’re going dancing. Mum stands watching me for a moment, then rushes out of the room. I think maybe she’s gone to throw up, but she comes back with a tea towel and thrusts it at me.

‘Lean back. Press this against your nose.’

Since my way’s not working, I do as she says. Blood leaks down my throat. I swallow as much as I can, but loads of it goes in my mouth and I can’t really breathe. I sit forward and spit onto the tea towel. A big clot glistens back at me, alien dark. It’s definitely not something that’s supposed to be outside my body.

‘Give that to me,’ Mum says.

I hand it over and she looks at it closely before wrapping it up. Her hands, like mine, are smeared with blood now.

‘What am I going to do, Mum? He’ll be here soon.’

‘It’ll stop in a minute.’

‘Look at my clothes!’

She shakes her head at me in despair. ‘You better lie down.’

This is also the wrong thing to do, but it’s not stopping, so everything’s ruined anyway. Mum sits on the edge of the sofa. I lie back and watch shapes brighten and dissolve. I imagine I’m on a sinking ship. A shadow flaps its wings at me.

Mum says, ‘Does that feel any better?’

‘Much.’

I don’t think she believes me, because she goes out to the kitchen and comes back with the ice-cube tray. She squats next to the sofa and empties it onto her lap. Ice cubes skate off her jeans and onto the carpet. She picks one up, wipes the fluff off and hands it to me.

‘Hold this on your nose.’

‘Frozen peas would be better, Mum.’

She thinks about this for a second, then rushes off again, returning with a packet of sweetcorn.

‘Will this do? There weren’t any peas.’

It makes me laugh, which I guess is something.

‘What?’ she says. ‘What’s so funny?’

Her mascara is smeared, her hair flyaway. I reach for her arm and she helps me sit up. I feel ancient. I swing my legs onto the floor and pinch the top of my nose between two fingers like they showed me at the hospital. My pulse is pounding against my head.

‘It’s not stopping, is it? I’m going to call Dad.’

‘He’ll think you can’t cope.’

‘Let him.’

She dials his number quickly. She gets it wrong, re-dials.

‘Come on, come on,’ she says under her breath.

The room is very pale. All the ornaments on the mantelpiece bleached as bones.

‘He’s not answering. Why isn’t he answering? How noisy can it be at a bowling alley?’

‘It’s his first night out for weeks, Mum. Leave him. We’ll manage.’

Her face crashes. She hasn’t dealt with a single transfusion or lumbar puncture. She wasn’t allowed near me for the bone-marrow transplant, but she could have been there for any number of diagnoses, and wasn’t. Even her promises to visit more often have faded away with Christmas. It’s her turn to taste some reality.

‘You have to take me to hospital, Mum.’

She looks horrified. ‘Dad’s got the car.’

‘Call a cab.’

‘What about Cal?’

‘He’s asleep, isn’t he?’

She nods forlornly, the logistics beyond her.

‘Write him a note.’

‘We can’t leave him on his own!’

‘He’s eleven, Mum, practically a grown-up.’

She hesitates only briefly, then scrolls through her address book to dial a cab. I watch her face, but my focus won’t really hold. All I get is an impression of fear and bewilderment. I close my eyes and think of a mother I saw in a film once. She lived on a mountain with a gun and lots of children. She was sure and certain. I stick this mother on top of mine, like plaster on a wound.

When I open my eyes again, she’s clutching armfuls of towels and tugging at my coat. ‘You probably shouldn’t go to sleep,’ she says. ‘Come on, let’s get you up. That was the door.’

I feel dazed and hot, as if everything might be a dream. She hauls me up and we shuffle out to the hallway together. I can hear whispering coming from the wall.

But it’s not the cab, it’s Adam, all dressed up for our date. I try and hide, try and stumble back into the lounge, but he sees me.

‘Tess,’ he says. ‘Oh my God! What’s happened?’

‘Nosebleed,’ Mum tells him. ‘We thought you were the cab.’

‘You’re going to the hospital? I’ll take you in my dad’s car.’