My Brother's Shadow (2 page)

I hear Dev calling him “Wild Child”—not to his face, of course, but in a whispered hush as he and his idiot friends scuttle past me.

Dev means it as an insult, I know that. But I don't think it
is
an insult. He is a child. And he is wild. What's wrong with that?

Wild animals are fierce and dangerous and free. Wild flowers are the most precious and beautiful. And wild thoughts are what make us feel alive. Like when I think about jumping on the table in the middle of Mr. Wills's maths lesson and shouting at the top of my voice, “I'm not stupid! I'm just stuck!”

I like the boy. He
is
wild. He scares all the idiots in my class; I can see them cower as he walks by. He has hair like a deep, starless night. And he likes staring, like me.

I stare at everyone. Everyone ignores me. Nearly everyone. Luzie catches my eye. She is sitting in a circle of my ex-friends. Her eyes are sad. Her lips begin to rise in a smile. I look away.

We're not allowed to take pens out to the playground, but I've been sitting writing all lunch. No one usually sees me, not even the teachers.

On bad days Poppy sees me. Today's a bad day.

She crept up behind me. “All right, freak,” she whispered in my ear.

Giggles then from Poppy's idiot friends.

I didn't turn. I didn't answer.

“What you writing, freak?”

I'd closed the book. I held it tightly. I held my thoughts tightly.

“Whatever, freak,” Poppy hissed. More giggles. Then I felt a tug on my hair as she pulled at my frizzy mop. Still I didn't move.

The boy sees me too.

I was sitting where I am now, where I'd stolen a sad glance from Luzie, where Poppy had tugged at my curly black hair—on my second-favorite bench. My coat was buttoned up and a long, thick scarf that Mum knitted an age ago was tied round my neck, face and head when I first spoke to him.

His prowl led him right past me.

He stared. I stared. His dark gray eyes tried to swallow me, but before they could I whispered, “I like your hair.”

Another stupid thing to say.

His eyes flashed. I breathed in. He continued his prowl. I breathed out.

That was our first conversation.

Can you call that a conversation?

Of course. Both people don't have to talk, just respond. He flashed his eyes.

Mum says that I mustn't talk to myself, that I'll make myself go mad.

I think it might be too late for that.

He said, “Bye-di-bye, Tiny,” in the morning
, pinching my sides, making me giggle. Then my brother left for school. His cap was tilted back, and just before he closed the door his big, bright eyes smiled at me. You know, one of those secret smiles. I smiled back.

I used to have a lovely smile; Mum always tells me that. Used to. That makes me sad. What's wrong with my smile now?

I went to school, same as normal. I did my lessons, same as normal. I laughed and played with all my friends, Luzie, Angelica, Gemma, Hanaiya, same as normal. Mr. Wills said that I was “so
bright,” same as normal, and that I'd be able to read any book I liked soon. I walked home with Luzie and Shadid, same as normal.

Then normal ran away.

In my memory everything is wrong. Our front door looks warped, the paint cracked and peeling. The lock sucks my key in, the mouth of some hungry monster. The key burns my skin like ice.

I open the door and call, “Mo!”

This is greeted by a silence so complete, so unearthly, that my breath freezes in my lungs. The chill spreads out around me and frost cracks under my feet as I step towards my brother's room.

“Mo!” I whisper into air so still I can see my words hang in the mist ahead of me.

I place my hand on Moses's door and push.

Then I see him, as I see him now—whether waking or sleeping—cut into my mind.

He is still and cold, lying on his back. His head is propped against the bed but that priceless smile
is covered by his cap, fallen forwards. Apart from that all I can see is red—soaking into the carpet, smeared across the pages of discarded books, staining my last sight of my brother.

Nobody talked about the boy, not like when an
ordinary person joined our school.

Someone normal and straightforward and boring was the greatest fascination to my classmates. Someone normal would be mobbed in the playground, forced to tell every detail of their dull lives. Someone normal just fitted.

But this boy, this wild boy, he was too much, too wild, too extraordinary. He crashed into our lives. He haunted our days. And he fitted none but me.

Nobody talked about the boy, but there were whispers.

*  *  *

I'd spend a long time in the book corner, soaking in the covers of the books on the top shelf, the ones I still could not read. When Mr. Wills was busy reading with others, I'd pull them one by one from the shelves, gazing at the glossy pictures.

I was standing, staring at a picture of a boy with red hair sitting on a swing—it was a book I'd seen Luzie reading—when I heard the whisper and I knew straightaway who they were talking about: the boy.

“… just a weirdo. Wandering around, staring.”

It was Poppy, but her table wasn't by the book corner. I pushed myself up on tiptoes and peered over the bookshelf.

Poppy was standing behind Dev and Deon. Luzie and Angelica took up the other chairs.

“We-ir-do.” Dev rolled the word out like a catkin. Deon laughed.

“Shut up, Poppy,” Luzie said. “Don't be so horrible. You heard what Mr. Wills said. We've got to include everyone, no matter how different they are.”

“You shut up,” Poppy spat back.

I didn't want to be there. I didn't want to listen.

I tried to silently sneak back to my seat. I glanced at the table as I emerged, knocking the wobbly shelf; it shook and rocked on its uneven legs. Books crashed to the ground.

“What on earth is going on?” Mr. Wills yelled from his desk, where Shadid sat beside him reading a book about football.

All eyes were on me.

Poppy answered before I could. “Kaia was pushing in the book corner, sir.”

“Sit down, Kaia. You too, Poppy. I don't know what either of you think you are doing,” the teacher said. He returned to Shadid and the football book.

Poppy glared at me, anger in her cool blue eyes.

I looked away.

Luzie caught me, held my stare.

I walked away, back to my chair, an empty one beside it.

The wild boy prowls the playground. That's when we see him each day. I love it, love watching all the other kids.

The footballers, hampered by thick winter coats and dashing around after a stupid ball, stop and stare as the boy scuttles across the pitch, their game quite forgotten. Giggled conversations halt as he roams close by, sometimes baring his pearly yellow-white teeth. Little kids run squealing behind teachers, who squirm in their own rigid way. I love it.

He always comes past me, sitting on my first- or second-favorite bench, out of the way of traffic from the many games of tag. He always stops right by me and stares. I stare. He stares.

Then I speak. I tell him other things I like.

“I liked it when you growled at Dev,” or “I like your trainers.” He wore an odd pair, one white, one green, which I guessed he'd plucked from lost property.

Then he flashes his glorious gray eyes and continues his prowl.

That's until today. Today was different.

I had got myself comfortable, lunch finished, a thin book in my coat pocket, my scarf wrapped tightly. I was sitting on my favorite bench, a circular one, which hugs the base of a large sycamore (
Acer pseudoplatanus
), one of the most wonderful trees:
rough bark that peels away to reveal a pinky-brown flesh; three-pronged leaves, tinged with purple, especially when the sun gleams down through them; a majestic rounded dome, giving a feeling of safety as you rest beneath its aged boughs
.

Here I was, sitting, gazing heavenward, peering through the now leafless branches at the watery blue sky. It was a vast spider's web above, complete with giant spider—a long-abandoned nest, twigs
poking out in all directions. I had been looking up for a long time when a clunk brought a yelp from my throat.

The boy had leapt up on the bench beside me and was staring with great intensity into the canopy.

“Hello,” I said, breathless.

The boy slowly turned towards me.

“What's your name?” I asked.

He stared, silent.

So I tried again.

“My name's Kaia. What's yours?”

He didn't answer. He crouched beside me and turned his face to the cloudless blue again. I examined for a moment the angular shape of his face—the sharp pointed nose, the thick black eyebrows and hard, sticking-out jaw—then joined my new friend in staring at the sky.

Together we stared.

Together we stare.

I used to get in trouble. I wasn't trouble myself
. But I was involved.

Did I like being involved? I don't know; my memory's frozen like the rest of me, frozen in that one moment. I guess I did, though.

We were silly and careless. We talked when we should have been listening and giggled when we should have been working.

“I'm fed up with this!” Mr. Wills would shout. “You've got to be more focused.”

Why did I stop being involved? I don't think I had a choice. I stopped talking, couldn't talk to any of my friends after it happened, after I found my brother.

Found
is a funny word, isn't it? It can mean a wonderful discovery: I found a fifty-pound note; I found my way; I found what I needed. And then we use it too for terrible discoveries: I found out my smile is no longer lovely; I found that all my friends stopped talking to me; I found my brother.

I'd hoped, when we moved to Year Six, I'd have a new teacher. Someone who saw me, who gave me time. Someone to help. But Mr. Wills came with us. “To help you stay settled after a difficult year,” the head teacher said.

He's OK, I guess. At least I don't get in trouble anymore. Not that kind, anyway. I'm not involved.

The teacher didn't introduce our new classmate. We all knew him already. He'd prowled and growled and snarled his way through our playtimes. One day he wasn't there and the next day he was, standing in the door to our classroom, filling my mind with a low growl.

“Hello,” I whispered as Mr. Wills called the register.

The boy stared. I smiled. Gray eyes flashed.

I felt Mr. Wills's eyes on me. His brow crinkled like an autumn leaf as I looked up.
Take care of the boy
, his look said.

I nodded. I beamed. Not my biggest smile, but enough to be noticed.

“I'm glad you're happy, Kaia.” Mr. Wills smiled at me, almost like he used to, then returned to the register.

From a few tables away, Dev wrinkled his nose. His look was one of confusion, fear perhaps.

The boy growled.

I grinned again.

A small whimper seemed to pass Dev's lips, but if it did, no one else noticed.

Silently I stood as Mr. Wills continued the register.

“Good afternoon, Angelica.”

“Good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon, Sirat.”

I approached with caution, watching him as he watched me. I liked him, but he was wild.

I reached out my hand. The boy didn't move, not towards me or away. I took him by the arm. He pulled it back. I smiled and tried again. This time he followed.

“Homework,” Mr. Wills called, the register complete.

The class groaned almost as one.

Still I grinned; an empty seat was filled.

Interview someone in your family about their job for careers week next week
.

Ask them:

There's only one other person left in my family. So I wrote these questions for her.

I didn't ask her these questions. I just wrote them. I didn't ask her because we don't talk anymore.

We say things, we have conversations.

“How was school?”

“Fine. What's for dinner?”

“Sorry, pizza again.”

“Time for bed now.”

“OK, night.”

“Night.”

We have conversations, but we don't talk. Not like we used to. Not like we did before. Before, our flat was filled with chatter and smells and sights.
Now it's blank, frozen like me, and gray and worn like Mum. Before, our kitchen was dusted in flour and sugar and sticky crumbs; me and Mum used to bake and Moses used to eat. Our kitchen's bare now, cupboards empty apart from jars of jam and peanut butter, tins of beans, an assortment of unused herbs and spices, and bottles filled and half filled—bottles I don't touch.

I remember laughter in our home. I remember it like a dream: you know it happened, but all the details pour away through your fingers as you try to grasp them, like the sand in an hourglass. That time has been and gone.

Ignore what I said; I still do get in trouble.

“Come on, Kaia, how are you ever going to improve if you don't do the work?”

I didn't tell Mr. Wills that I couldn't. I didn't tell him that the only family I have spends most of her time whispering into a bottle rather than talking to her daughter.