The Bubble Boy (31 page)

I click on the new messages.

Beth sniggers.

‘Go on,’ she says.

I click on the next.

I look at Beth. She’s looking out the corner of her eyes like she hasn’t read it.

I type.

Beth shakes her head and points at the next message.

‘Who’s that one?’ she asks.

‘Hannah.’

‘She’s sent quite a few.’

‘I know.’

Beth nudges me. ‘Go on then, let’s have a look.’

I click on Hannah’s message.

‘Awww, She sounds really nice.’

‘Well, she’s nicer than the KFC guy!’

Beth laughs. ‘I expect he’s okay too . . . Are you going to reply?’

‘Yeah, but not now.’

‘I’m glad she wrote. You need to meet new people.’

‘So do you,’ I say.

She goes quiet and looks at the screen. Her cheeks turn red. I know what that means.

‘Have you got a boyfriend?!’ I sit up on my bed. Beth is smiling.

‘Have you?’

‘I might have.’ She pauses. ‘To be honest, it’s where I was when you were taken ill.’

‘Eeeeew!’

‘Haha, it wasn’t like that!’ She pushes me on my shoulder. ‘It was a party. Loads of people were there.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Dan.’

‘What does he do?’

‘He’s a graphic designer.’

‘Oh . . . Amir used to be one of those.’

Beth goes quiet. I’d better not say his name again.

‘Can he draw cartoons?’

‘Yeah. I’ll get him to draw you something.’

‘Cool.’ I think I’d like to be a graphic designer, for comics. I wonder if I could do it from my room.

Beth puts her arm around me. I scroll through the rest of the messages. I’m glad she’s got a boyfriend. Now when she’s finished work, she won’t go back to the flat and
spend her evenings alone. I hope I get to meet him, but Edinburgh to London is a long way and really expensive just to meet your girlfriend’s brother. But maybe he’s got a car and they
can drive on the motorway like I did with Amir. It’s 452 miles away. I can’t imagine what it’s like to drive that far. It was only 16 miles to Heathrow and that seemed to take
ages.

I close my eyes. The planes don’t take off any more but I can still see the cat’s-eyes that were in the middle of the road and the massive buildings either side of it. They play like
a film on repeat in my head. Beth’s head rests against mine. I wish she could see the film too.

E = Mc2, Lucozade, GlaxoSmithKline, and Mercedes-Benz.

E = Mc2, Lucozade, GlaxoSmithKline, and Mercedes-Benz.

E = Mc2, Lucozade, GlaxoSmithKline, and Mercedes-Benz.

11 years, 3 months and 19 days

I’m standing at the window. I sent Beth a text telling her about the dream I had last night after she left. She thought it was great but a bit weird. Then she told me
that she’d spoken to her boyfriend, Dan. He’s going to draw me Spider-Man. He said he’ll bring it with him when he visits me. It’ll be cool to talk to him; maybe he’ll
like all superheroes and we can watch football together too. I want to send her a text now, but it’s late.

It’s too late to message Hannah too.

It’s raining outside. The lights in the glass building are all dim and blurry and the pavements are shining orange. I turn my head and look down the road. It’s long, dark and empty.
The diggers and the trucks and the traffic lights have gone. Mike, Andy, Chris and Dave’s van has gone too. All that’s left is a new shiny strip of tarmac running down the middle of the
road.

If the aliens wanted to land on earth they should do it on a Sunday night like this when everyone is at home watching TV.

I hear a click behind me. Greg comes in, puts my pyjamas on my bed and then stands next to me. We look out of the window and watch a man on a motorbike speed down the new tarmac.

Greg smiles. ‘I think he believed it, mate.’

‘. . . Who?’

‘Amir. I think he really thought that the aliens were going to land on that strip.’

‘How did you know that?’

‘It’s okay, Joe. He told me too.’

‘But you don’t believe in them?’

‘No, mate. I’ve told you before.’

I look back out of the window down at the gravity boost porthole. That’s where Amir said they would land. The spaceship would hover above it, with bright lights shining down onto the road.
I rest my head against the glass. Out of the corner of my eye I see Greg looking at me.

‘I’ll give you a penny for your thoughts, mate,’ he says.

‘Just thinking.’

‘. . . about Henry?’

‘No. Aliens.’

‘If you believed in them, I could talk to you about them like I used to with Amir.’

‘You can still talk about them, mate. I don’t mind.’

‘You’ll laugh.’

‘I won’t,’ he says.

‘Promise?’

‘Go on, tell me, mate.’

I point at the drain cover in the middle of the road just after the crossing. ‘They’re going to land there, but the spaceship won’t touch the ground. It’ll hover with a
beam of light above the gravity porthole. Then the doors of the spaceship will open and a gangplank will slide out and go straight into the reception.’

Greg stares at the drain cover. ‘Keep going, mate,’ he says.

‘The aliens will walk out one by one. They won’t have to wait for an appointment; they won’t have to ask for directions because as soon as they get inside they will take over
all the doctors and nurses, take their bodies and their minds. But they’re not stealing them –’

‘That’s a relief.’

‘No, they’re just going to borrow you for a while.’

Greg rests his hands on the sill. I tell him that the aliens won’t have to wait for the lifts or climb the stairs because they can morph through ceilings and walls. And when they do the
rounds and visit us all, we won’t have to unbutton our shirts because they won’t have stethoscopes hanging around their necks or heart monitors in their pockets. All they’ll need
are their minds and their hands. ‘Really?’ Greg looks surprised.

‘They’re here to cure us . . . not kill us.’ I say. ‘They just stare at us, one by one and get inside our bodies and find the poison, then they’ll take it all away.
And when we’re cured we all put on our clothes and shoes and walk out of the doors and then we get to go home.’

Greg smiles and puts his arm around my shoulder. ‘Mate, maybe I should have believed in aliens after all.’

I smile and look back out the window. I miss Amir talking about the aliens. I miss having him around. He took me outside, he got me Sky TV and introduced me to his family. But most of all I miss
talking to him. Maybe he was crazy but he was so much fun. I wish he could’ve stayed. I’m tired of the nurses changing all the time. The only one that stays is Greg.

‘You okay, mate?’ Greg squeezes me.

‘I miss Amir.’

Greg sighs. ‘Yeah, we all do, mate. It’s difficult not to miss someone like that! But maybe this wasn’t the job for him.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t know. Not everyone can do it. You know what it’s like.’

‘Kids dying.’

‘Yeah. Not everyone can cope with that. I don’t think he could, mate.’

I look down onto the street. A man and a woman are walking hand in hand. They stop and look at the clothes-shop window. A car’s headlights light up the landing strip as it goes down the
road.

Greg ruffles my hair.

‘Come on, mate. You can’t stand here all night.’

I turn around, pick up my pyjamas from the bed, and take them with me into the bathroom. I wash and change while Greg checks my monitors and puts a fresh glass of water on my table.

The blinds are drawn when I go back out. Greg stands by the door and watches me get into bed.

‘I’ll check on you later, mate. Maybe catch some football in the morning.’

‘Okay.’ I slide down under the covers.

‘Night, mate.’

‘Goodnight.’

He dims the lights and slides out the door. I hear the sound of water running, then the click of the transition room door. Greg will be walking down the corridor. I lie back and remember all the
things I saw on my adventure – all the lights and doors, and the pictures of elephants and giraffes stuck to the walls. I’d like to see them again. I’d like to meet the kids who
drew them.

I jump as my phone buzzes. It’ll be Beth telling me she’s got home. I reach over and pick it up.

My heart starts pounding. Is he really here? I slide my feet off my bed and walk over to the window. There’s a man wearing a hat walking down the middle of the road. He
stops and crouches down and smoothes the tarmac. What is he doing? If a bus comes along he’ll get flattened like a cartoon cat and I won’t be able to go out and blow him back up.

The man reaches into his coat pocket and gets out his phone. He looks like he’s typing a message. Then he looks up at me.

My phone buzzes in my hand.

I laugh. I can’t believe he’s here, even if he is here to see the aliens land and not me.

He stands up and walks over to the bus stop and rests against the wall. He types and then looks up at me. My phone buzzes again.

I smile down at my phone and try to think what to write next, but I don’t want to text. I’ve spent my life talking to people through screens. I want to talk to real
people.

He points at the CCTV cameras on the lamppost.

I nod. He’s right. Maybe we were lucky last time. If Jim had read a short chapter in the toilet or if Phil had got bored and checked the building backwards, we might have
got caught before we’d got out of the reception doors. I wish he could come in. I know everybody thinks he’s done something wrong, but it wasn’t a crime.

My phone buzzes again.

Amir’s standing at the kerb
.

I turn away from the window.

I can’t stop grinning to myself. I walk over to the table and pick up the remote. The screens flicker on and light up my room. On screen 6, Jim is in the waiting area reading his book and
eating sandwiches. Phil is on screen 9. He’s walking down the corridor towards the Bluebell Ward tapping a rolled-up newspaper against the wall. It looks like he’s whistling.

I check all the other screens. Most of the corridors are empty. On the 12
^th
floor, a nurse is talking to a porter. On the 10
^th
floor, an African lady with a headdress is
talking to a doctor outside the Butterfly Ward. I don’t think I have to worry about them. They won’t know who Amir is unless the hospital have put up a WANTED poster of him on the
notice board.

Jim clips the lid on his sandwich box. He stands up.