Ways to Live Forever (13 page)

Things are different now.

I don’t go to clinic any more. Annie comes more often. If she doesn’t come, she rings Mum up and talks to her.

People keep coming to see us. Grandma and Grandpa came all the way from Orkney and stayed with Granny. Auntie Jane came and gave me a wooden elephant and Auntie Nicola came down from Edinburgh, gave me a book about castles, and went back up the same night. Uncle Richard came while I was working with Mrs Willis, deciding what order to put all the lists and stories and things in my book. Mum said I had to come and talk to him and I wouldn’t. Mum got angry and said he’d come all the way from Lincoln to see me. I got angry too. I don’t want to be nice to aunts and uncles all day.

“I want to do my things!” I said. “I don’t have any time to do my things!” I bent my head over my piece of paper and wouldn’t look at her.

Mrs Willis said maybe she shouldn’t come as often.

“No!” I said. “I want you to keep coming.”

Uncle Richard got very flustered and said he didn’t want to cause any trouble. He gave me a jumper that said “SURFING USA” on it and then he and Mum sat on the sofa talking while me and Mrs Willis tried to work.

After that, Mum said people could only stay for twenty minutes and not when I was doing school. School isn’t as regular as it used to be, anyway. Mrs Willis rings up before she comes, in case I’m asleep or something. I sleep quite a lot. It comes in useful. Mum’s friend Maureen came round three times to see me last week and I just squeezed my eyes tight shut and pretended to be asleep.

Ella is funny too. People keep wanting to take her out to the cinema or to dancing lessons or something, but she never will. She won’t go to school either. Mum has a big fight with her every morning. Mostly Mum makes her go, but sometimes she gets to stay at home. When she’s allowed to stay, she does her Good Brownie routine. She comes up to me and puts her hands behind her back and says, “Mum says do you want anything?”

That’s Mum’s way of saying, “Do you want something to eat?” She had a big talk with Annie about me not eating properly. Now she doesn’t make me eat dinners, but she keeps feeding me bits of things like fruit or ice cream. So yesterday I said, “Yes, I want a bottle of beer and a speedboat.” Ella started giggling and ran back to Mum. She was gone for ages. Then she came back in a big apron, like a chef, with a tray and a bottle of beer that she’d got from next door, giggling away.

Yesterday, Mum let her stay at home because I had a big nosebleed in the middle of the night and woke everyone up. Mrs Willis said she could do lessons with us.

“You don’t want to write a book too, do you?” she said. Ella shook her head.

“I’m going to do pictures for Sam’s book,” she said.

I don't want Ella's babyish pictures in my book, but I didn't say so. Maybe she can have
one
. She drew a picture yesterday of us all. Mum and Dad were holding hands and me and Ella were waving. There was black spiky grass, and flowers, and a great big sun with great big sun rays wobbling all over the sky.

I don’t just sleep a lot. When I’m not asleep, I can’t wake up properly. I’m tired and I ache all over. I can’t write and I can’t think.

When Mrs Willis came today, I said I didn’t want to work. She didn’t make me. Instead, she brought a bucket of clay from her car and we made things. We put newspapers over the coffee table in the living room and spread the clay all over them. Some fell off and got on the carpet, but Mum didn’t fuss. She said it would all come out with soap and water, all come out in the wash, she said, and it did.

The clay was perfect, wet-dark and slippery-smooth. I held it and squeezed it and it oozed out from the bottom of one hand and into the palm of the other. I made it into balls and little aeroplanes and fake fossils to bury in the garden and confuse geologists. I wrote my name in it with the knife. Sam Oliver McQueen. S.O.M. Sam.

Mrs Willis made me a little ship, with a mast and a clay sail but no keel, because it’s a sailing ship and you can’t see the keel under the water. It has a flag at the top of the mast, clay bent to look as if it’s flying.

“Where’s it going?” she said, and I said, “Africa.”

I made a round clay bird for Ella, a blackbird because she has black hair. I made an owl for Dad with round owl glasses like he has and feathers drawn on with a knife. I made Mum a sparrow because of the Bible story about the sparrows who were sold for two-a-penny. Nobody thought they were worth anything, but God knew all of them by name.

Mrs Willis said she would take my birds and my boat and bake them in her friend’s kiln and then they would harden and set forever. She said next time she came, we could paint them properly and I could give them as presents.

I could give them as soon as the paint was dry, she said. Or I could save them and give them later, if I wanted.

Today, Mrs Willis brought my birds back.

The fire of the kiln had hardened the clay and turned it a pale pink. We looked up sparrows and owls and blackbirds in Mum’s big bird book, to get the colours just right. I made Dad an eagle owl, because they’re so big and fierce-looking. They have sticky-up ear tufts, but I just painted those on the top of my owl’s head. Mum’s bird was a hedge sparrow, with a grey belly and little eyes. Hedge sparrows and eagle owls look different but they’re the same colours: brown, with black spots.

“Birds of a feather flock together,” said Mrs Willis and she put them side by side to dry.

Ella’s bird was easy. Shiny black feathers and a yellow beak, although really girl blackbirds aren’t black. The blackbird in the book had his head in the air and a glint in his eye. It looked a bit like Ella, squaring up for a fight.

“Ella’s going to be all right,” I thought, and I painted a smile on her bird. Birds don’t smile, really, but then owls don’t wear glasses either and Dad’s was, so it didn’t matter.

After Mrs Willis had gone, I fell asleep again. When I woke up, I lay on the sofa and thought about her and Granny and Annie. They ought to have presents too, but I didn’t have any more clay and I didn’t know how to make anything else, except cakes. And you can’t keep cakes. I wanted a present that meant they wouldn’t forget me. I mean, I know Granny’s got lots of photographs of me, but Annie and Mrs Willis haven’t.

I got up and went to find Mum. She was sitting at the table looking out at the garden.

“Hello, sweetheart,” she said when I came and sat down by her. She put her arm round me. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” I said. I rested my head against her. “Do you have any photos of me?”

“I think I might have one or two somewhere,” said Mum. “Why?”

“I want to make something for Annie and Granny and Mrs Willis. I thought I could do photo frames, with pictures, only we’ve used up all the clay.”

“I’m sure we can think of something,” said Mum.

We had a good afternoon. Mum found me some old picture frames and we stuck them all over with the little tiles left over from the bathroom. When the glue was dry, we covered all the spaces with grout, so you couldn’t see any of the old frames. Anyone who came to visit, we made help. I fell asleep while they were finishing them. When I woke up, Mum and Mum’s vicar and two old ladies from her church were all sitting there with grouty hands, making picture frames.

When I woke up today, the sun was shining through the windows. I lay on my side and watched the sunlight dancing on the wall. The air was bright and full of light.

I got up and went into the living room. I walked very slowly and carefully. I felt strange and light-headed. The world looked different, kind of the way it does, sometimes, when you realize that you’re a person looking at the world and you suddenly think how weird that is. That’s a sofa, that’s Ella’s old elephant, that’s an IV stand – it’s like you’re looking at them on a TV screen for the first time and you realize how strange it is that you’re in the world, looking at these very bright and
here
things and how you’re
here
too, but at the same time you’re kind of not, you’re separate, watching it all from somewhere else.

Maybe you don’t know what I mean. But that’s how I felt.

Ella was sitting on the sofa, watching cartoons in her pyjamas. Mum and Dad and Granny were sharing the big Saturday newspaper on the dining table. They looked up as I came through.

“Look,” said Mum, holding out her hand. “Spring’s come.”

I looked out of the window. The sun was shining, the sky was blue from edge to edge and you could see for the first time where new little leaves were uncurling on the trees.

I sat down by Dad. I still felt strange. Sort of not quite connected to the rest of the world.

“Annie’s coming round in a bit,” said Mum.

“Can we invite Mrs Willis too?” I said. I looked at her meaningfully. She got it straight away.

“Of course. We could all go and sit out in the garden.”

It was a bit cold to sit in the garden, but nobody cared. Mum fussed around for ages making tea and offering people biscuits and I kept going, “Mum.
Mu-um
,” until
finally
she put down the teapot and said, “Sam has something for you.”

They liked their presents. Dad liked the eagle owl so much, he said he was going to buy some hair gel and make himself ear tufts to scare all the people who work for him. Mrs Willis said she’d never had a nicer present and it was even better than a kid she’d once taught who’d given her one of his kidney stones. All the grown-ups sat and talked for ages and ages. Ella got bored and went off to play swing-tennis, but I didn’t feel like it. I sat watching them all, trying to hold them tight and safe in my memory, until I fell asleep.