Not As We Know It (3 page)

People always assume Ned's my little brother. He is almost a foot shorter than me. Where I'm broad like Dad, Ned's tiny. He could pass for a six-year-old. He's eleven. We're both eleven.

Ned
is
my little brother, but only by eight minutes.

Mum and Dad say he came into the world coughing and he hasn't stopped since. You expect twins to have the same lives, do all the same things. Ned and I had different lives from the start; they rushed him away to clear all the gunk from his lungs, while I slept peacefully swaddled.

It wasn't till later that they knew what his condition was. Mum said she took him to the doctor because he tasted salty. The doctor knew what was wrong straightaway.

It was the first time any of us had heard the words
cystic fibrosis.
We're experts now.

When we got back from Granddad's, Mum made Ned have a rest. A rest meant lying on the sofa, rewatching
Star Trek.
My brother gave me a look as he sat down and I stood by the door.

“You're not going to sit with your brother, Jamie?” Mum asked.

“Erm,” I replied. On the way home, I'd agreed on the secret, on our adventure—and we'd agreed that if we were keeping Leonard, then he needed feeding.

Although our lives were very different we usually stuck together. When they took Ned out of school, Mum had wanted me to stay there. But I ran from the schoolyard and away home every day. I had this terrible feeling that I'd lose him, that he'd go and I wouldn't get a chance to say goodbye.

After a week of the same, my teacher and parents agreed it would be best if I was homeschooled too.

“Erm,” I said again. I could not think of a reason why I wasn't watching
Star Trek.

Ned rescued me. “He's got to put the bikes away. Haven't you, Jamie? We just left them by the gate
like the lazy dogs that we are.
” He laughed, the moment of seriousness forgotten.

Mum frowned.

I slipped away.

I leaned the bikes by the garage door. The latch had not been touched. I slid it across, pushed open the door, just a crack, and peered inside. The light was off but I could see the lip of the tub in the gloom. I opened the door a little more and reached for the light switch. I flicked it on. Nothing happened. I flicked again. Nothing. I opened the door wide and looked up at the bulb. It was smashed.

I pulled the door shut with me on the outside. I thought about the wolffish, living in the dark depths of the ocean, and I made a mental note: Leonard doesn't like light.

I needed light, though. I knew where my torch was and fetched it from our bedroom. But before I went back to the garage, I snuck down to the cellar and the deep freeze.

We never get through all the fish that Granddad gives us—Dad isn't a huge fan. So I took a plastic bag of frozen herring out of the freezer and tried to creep back to Leonard.

“What are you doing, Jamie?” Mum called from the kitchen.

I had planned my answer this time. “Ned got a puncture. Just fixing it.”

“Yeah, I did, Mum!” Ned shouted over the sound of phasers shooting down an enemy spaceship.

There was no sign of Leonard in the tub. I shone the torch into every corner of the garage but still nothing.

“Hello,” I said.

No answer.

I pulled open the bag and threw one frozen herring toward the tub. It hit the edge with a crack, then slid into the water. I shone the torch over it as it bobbed on the surface.

Ned would have strolled in and peered into the tub. He was the brave one. In
Star Trek,
he would have been Captain Kirk. I would have been the doctor, Leonard McCoy. He was the cautious one.

“Damn it, Jim. I'm a doctor, not a merman keeper,”
Bones would say.

No away mission takes place without Kirk and now I was stuck without Ned. Like when you stand just beyond the waves' wash and let your feet sink into the wet sand.

I imagined my brother beside me.
“Boldly go,”
I whispered, and took one step, still watching the herring.

A scuttle. A scurry. A splash. And Leonard was back in the tub, returned from his hiding place. A hand shot out of the water. It was just a flash and the herring was gone. Ripples spread out across the bath from where the fish had been.

I nearly dropped the torch.

I couldn't go any farther. I needed Captain Kirk ahead of me. I threw two more herring into the bath, then I dropped the empty bag and ran.

Outside, I made sure the latch was all the way across before leaning against the closed door and gulping in air.

Ned was asleep when I got back. Mum had wrapped a blanket around him. Spock was warning Captain Kirk against fighting an alien with his bare hands. Kirk was ignoring him.

“Right, Jamie, I want to get some writing out of you,” Mum said.

We didn't make it back to the garage that afternoon. Ned slept the rest of the day, while I wrote about the storm. Dad got home early and was filthy. He was always filthy. But he set me some maths before his bath.

When Ned woke, it was dinnertime. Then the rain came. Big, heavy drops; the kind of rain we knew Mum would never let Ned out in.

“You boys have a good day?” Dad asked. He drank coffee. We had mugs of hot chocolate.

“Yeah,” Ned said. “You can't beat a big sleep.”

“Did you get anything good on the beach?” Sometimes Dad came treasure hunting with us at the weekends.

“Erm…,” I said, pushing down the urge to shout once more.

“Just a shoe,” Ned finished.

We all agreed that was pretty rubbish. We had too many shoes. Dad knew a man who collected abandoned buckets and spades and hung them off a tree in his front garden. We had enough shoes for a shoe tree.

“Mum wouldn't like that, though,” Dad said.

“We could…
persuade her,
” Ned said with a grin.

“Maybe one day.” Dad winked.

In our bunks—Ned on the top, me on the bottom—I told Ned about the herring. He wasn't surprised.

“That's what mermen must eat,” he said. “We should get him some mussels too. I reckon Leonard loves mussels.”

That was the first time I felt it. Not jealousy yet. Just a strange feeling that something was happening, something unknowable, between my brother and the fish-man living in our garage.

One of Granddad's favorite stories was about the night he heard the whales sing. He'd been at sea for weeks. It's not easy for sailors to get lost. Unless it's cloudy. Then the stars are hidden at night and the sun is gone for most of the day. Before the whales sang, the ship's equipment had broken and the clouds had been thick for three days and nights.

“That's the only time I've ever been truly scared at sea,” Granddad would say. “If a storm had come, we would not have had the foggiest where shallow water or rocks might be.”

They put the ship at anchor and slept, praying for clear skies in the morning.

“That night every soul on board was woken by deep singing. You can hear history in a whale's song—each booming note slowly shaking your bones, vibrating through you. We all went out on deck and there they were. Huge beasts, shining in the moonlight. A gam of whales.”

Granddad said that the captain, Long Ben, was one of the best seamen he'd ever known. “Knew the sea like a mother.”

Long Ben called for the anchor to be raised. The crew fired up the engine and followed the whales. And when the sun rose, they were in sight of land and in the shipping lane they'd lost. With a song, the whales had led them home.

The night after we found Leonard, I couldn't sleep; there was a whistle on the wind. Leonard was singing.

“Jamie,” Ned said. “Can you hear him?”

We stared out of our window, down to the garage and across the sea. Leonard's home was somewhere out there. Maybe Leonard had a family waiting for him to come home. Maybe he was lost.

“Ned,” I whispered, and for the first time I said what we both knew. “We can't keep him forever.”

Ned wasn't listening. He was searching for something in his drawer. He came back to the window with his Walkman. Dad had bought it last time my brother had a long stay in hospital. It had a big microphone unit on the top. Our friend Tibs, who lived at the post office round the corner, had been so jealous when he had seen it.

Ned pushed open the window, but before pressing record he turned back to me. “You can't keep anything forever,” he whispered.

The next day was one Ned wanted to get away from. Mum and Dad had learned not to tell him when those days were coming. Otherwise he'd be gone before morning and we'd spend the day searching for him.

The last time that happened, Mum had been distraught. She thought we'd lost Ned for good, till I found him rock pooling on the cliffs by Portland Bill.

Now Mum just wakes us from the doorway with her tea in hand and her dressing gown wrapped round her and says, “Appointment today, Neddy. Dad's waiting downstairs.” And Dad would be waiting in the hallway. No chance of Ned slipping away.

Ned usually swears when he hears this news. That day he didn't say anything.

“You all right, Ned?” Mum said.

I grabbed his bunk and pulled myself up to peer at him. “He's not there, Mum,” I said.

Mum swore. “How did he know?” she said, then shouted to Dad, “Did you tell him, Charlie?”

“What?” Dad called back.

“He's not here.”

“Where is he, Jamie?” Dad yelled.

I was always expected to know. Like I was expected to make sure Ned didn't do too much. Get him home on time. Keep
our
room tidy. Even my parents forgot we were the same age.

I did have a good idea where he was this time, though. “I'll check the garage,” I said before anyone else thought of it.

“Ned,” I whispered as the door squeaked open. There was a splash, then a torch flicked on. The beam was directed at me. “Ned?” I said again.

“Shhh,” my brother whispered. “He doesn't like noise.” He flicked the torch off again. “Or light.”

I stayed by the open door. I could see my brother, just a dark outline in the few beams of light I let into the garage. “Did you talk to him?” I said.

Ned laughed quietly. “Do you think Leonard speaks English?” he asked. “I just
know.
Talking's not the word exactly.”

I stood and stared. I wasn't sure what to make of Ned's knowing. It felt like
our
adventure was fast becoming
Ned's
adventure. Jealousy crawled across my skin.

“He touched me,” my brother said. “When I coughed, he touched me here.” I could see my brother's hand pressed against his chest. “His hand is so cold.”

I'd heard a doctor whisper the word
hopeless
to my parents at one of Ned's appointments. Maybe doctors didn't know everything. Maybe Leonard was more than just a fish-man. In stories, strange creatures brought about strange events. Magical events. Did Leonard have magic in his fingertips?

I told Ned about his appointment. He swore then, still whispering. He asked me to help him escape.

“You've got to go, Ned,” I said. “It might be different this time.”

I heard Ned grunt in the dark, then whisper again, maybe to me, maybe to Leonard, “And they might give me the moon on a stick.”