Fossils, page 7
She looked at him to see if he’d understood. She thought not, though she’d explained it in the simplest way she knew how. There was a strange glint in his eye that she couldn’t read, like he was thinking something else and hadn’t been listening, but she couldn’t be sure. He smiled at her vaguely. Maybe he couldn’t understand – it was complicated for some people – or maybe he thought she was making it up. It did sound a bit daft, all that stardust stuff. If you didn’t already know that it was true it must be like someone talking about fairy dust or nonsense like that.
Anyway, I’ve got to go. My dad will be back soon.
It wasn’t true that people would believe anything, because there was a lot of stuff that people were not willing to believe. It was also noticeable that the things they were not prepared to believe were often real and true. That was the funny thing about people. They’d believe any old nonsense if it fitted in with the nonsense they already believed, but tell them something that was true and it was like, hey, enough of that. The way they looked at her sometimes when she talked about stuff like climate chaos and species extinction, as if she was making the whole thing up and they weren’t going to be fooled into believing any of that rubbish. People had a low threshold for truth and even for words. People who lived around here, and where she came from too, weren’t that big on words – they were just something like a rough tool, like a tin opener, made to function just enough for the practical getting on with things. That’s how it was for most people. They didn’t see any urgency to increase the amount of words in use or to find just the right word for the job. In fact, there was a kind of distrust of language precision and fancy words in general. These were things, in themselves, to be avoided. Better a few words for a lot of things than a lot of words for a few things. Sherrie-Lee had noticed often and given a lot of time to thinking about it. Apart from the occasional oddball like Dammo Taylor, who did use a variety of words that people weren’t accustomed to using – he used them to show other people up, and for this reason alone was disliked by almost everyone. Disliked and not to be trusted. People teased him about eating dictionaries for breakfast and washing his mouth out to get rid of the excess of words. New words, out-of-the-ordinary words were regarded as suspect. This was why vocabularies were kept at a bare minimum and new words took a while to assimilate, if it was possible to admit them at all. They had to be accepted more generally among people first, they couldn’t just be brandished about and thrown in whenever. Dammo Taylor could attest to that, if he cared to. More than once, she’d seen him with a black eye and heard stories that he’d gone overboard with his vocabulary usage and had not heeded any warnings. Though there were contradictions to this too, she’d noticed. Like the speed with which new slang was adopted, running wildfire immediately, especially those words that annoyed Sherrie-Lee the most.
*
She wondered what Bob was doing at his job at the call centre. She’d seen a picture of one. All the people sat in rows with computer screens and headphones. They spent all day calling people. One after the other. Each of the people in the rows endlessly calling people. The phone bills must be massive. And it wasn’t just the place where Bob worked. There were hundreds of these places. Thousands of them. The telephone lines reaching into people’s homes, people in the middle of hoovering, in the middle of putting the tea on or having an argument, and then their phones rang. She imagined them stopping what they were doing, looking over at the phone when it started ringing – even though a ringing phone never looked any different than a phone that was not ringing – going over to the phone, picking it up and then being disappointed. All those stupid questions and offers going from one part of the earth to another, when that could have been space for real connection. That’s what it all seemed like from what Sherrie-Lee knew about them. Imagine if all those people, instead of pointlessly ringing people up who didn’t want to speak to them, had something real or useful to do, like cleaning up habitats or teaching people to care about animals, or just making conversation with someone who hadn’t spoken to anyone for three days, how much better the world would be. It seemed like a problem that would be easy to solve if people really wanted to solve it.
9
For days now, Sherrie-Lee had needed to go home to get extra clothes. She had worn her underwear inside-out, back-to-front, and back-to-front-inside-out, all the possible ways it was to wear them to get the most use out of them, and then started again from the beginning. There was other stuff she could do with too. She had been putting off going home, finding other things to do. But today, it was becoming urgent. Walking through her estate Sherrie-Lee didn’t see anyone, which was unusual, she thought. As though it wasn’t just Sherrie-Lee who had gone AWOL. She couldn’t even see anyone in their windows and gardens, though it was a sunny day. She saw all the familiar things that she saw every time she walked through the estate. The house with the trampoline. The corner section of grass with the overgrown privet hedge. The gate that had come off its hinges. The pink bird house on a post in the middle of a lawn that no self-respecting bird would ever sink to using. Sherrie-Lee picked up a stone, ovalish and grey, with white markings on one side. She would take it for Joshy, for his collection of fossils. None of them were really fossils, except the ammonite she’d nicked from Courtney McKinnley. And even that didn’t look like much more than a stone from one side, which meant that the stones could pass for fossils too. She picked only the ones that looked like real fossils. She had found most of them for him. She thought he liked them because they were creatures trapped inside something, a bit like he was trapped inside himself not being able to talk properly. Sometimes, he got frustrated because of that, especially at school.
He’d even been excluded a few times because of it. The markings on this one was a bit like the underside of a beetle, with lines criss-crossing like squashed traces of legs. That’s what she’d tell him it was, the fossil of an ancient kind of beetle, bigger than the modern beetles. All the prehistoric creatures were giant, except the prehistoric horses. They were tiny. She put the stone in her pocket. She liked fossils because they were not what they appeared to be. It was incredible, really, that something alive could be turned to stone like that. And exist as a stone for all those millions of years, looking like a stone but having the trace of something else hidden inside it. A trace that could only be seen if you knew something about them already. So many things were like that. She thought of all the times she’d walked around with Joshy looking at stones that might be fossils. Sometimes he found one that didn’t even look anything like a fossil, but if he fixed himself on keeping it there was nothing she could do to persuade him otherwise, even though it grated a bit to have one that wasn’t even a good impostor in the collection. The collection felt like it was hers as well, she’d found so many of the stones.
She walked past her Aunty Susan’s old flat. Someone else was living in it now. There was lots of stuff strewn over the front garden. Stuff waiting to be cleared away. She stopped and looked in. Among all the rubbish there was half of a vase. It was exactly half, broken down the middle as though it had been chopped in half. She’d seen a lot of broken things, but never something that had broken like that, so perfectly. Stepping inside the garden, she turned the half-vase with her foot to get a good look at the pattern. It was her aunt’s sparkly vase. Sherrie-Lee remembered the summer before she died, how she had obsessed about this vase in one of the shop windows in town. As though if she could have it, it would have transformative powers. It was more than just a vase. Sherrie-Lee had thought at the time that if it had been smaller, she would have got it for her and then, with bigger things, how you just needed more bravado. Just pick it up, pretend to be looking at it in the light, then just walk out with it. Soon after that she’d saved up anyway and bought the thing. When she got it home, she polished up the table so she could put it there. Sherrie-Lee had helped her. A whole crowd of people went round and sat on the sofa and looked at that big vase, up there on the table, like it had some magical qualities. Someone had said that it was so shiny and smooth-looking, like glass. Someone else had asked how they got all those sparkles inside. Sherrie-Lee herself had wondered that, because all the sparkles seemed to be just under the surface. It’s just a vase, someone else said, and they had a point. How much did you say it was? £14.99? And they made a huffing sound which meant Jesus, I wouldn’t pay half that for it. Someone else reassured her aunt and said it was a bargain. That one day it might be worth something, even though nobody believed that, and everyone laughed. All its magic seemed gone then, and people started to leave. In all the time her aunt had had it she’d never seen any flowers in it and now, here it was. It would never hold anything now. All those dreams gone too. And although she was only twelve and it seemed crazy to put so much into one fifteen quid vase, she felt kind of slumped and out of energy. That some bought possession had seemed charged with all kinds of power and importance, and to look at it now, broken and useless and stripped of meaning, seemed appalling and terrible.
She didn’t want to go back to her own house now, the way she was thinking. Everything felt drawn down and over. There was a kind of hopelessness about the place. Even walking down the street she felt it. She couldn’t find the right word to think of the kind of sadness it was. It was more than just one sadness for one life unlived; it was wider than that – for all the unlived lives, where nothing ever happened and even the everyday ordinariness gets cocked up over and over again. For no real reason other than from being here. Of never being able to escape, or have enough money or hope or chance. She crossed the empty road towards the park. It seemed strange that there was no one around. She thought about all the past, and how sad it was that it was all gone. The people, their voices, all gone, because they were nobody important. All their stories gone too. There was nobody even to uphold the memories of them because people only valued the wrong kind of stuff. She sat on a swing. The metal chain creaked loudly and slowly as she began to move it gently, her foot pivoted against the special tarmac beneath. The sound made the hollowness inside her spread, threaten to overflow.
As she sat, Sherrie-Lee saw Keeley Downes, who was a year younger than she was, climb over the low fence of the park and come over to sit by her. Everybody called her Keeley Downes, never just Keeley, or Downes like everyone called her older brother. She didn’t look at her, or say hello, she just came to sit by her. Sherrie-Lee was just glad to see another person, someone she knew.
Where is everyone? She asked.
Keeley Downes shrugged.
Shouldn’t you be in school? Sherrie-Lee said to her.
Shouldn’t you?
Keeley Downes took a phone from her back pocket, and dragged her finger across the screen in a practised way.
Thought you were proper missing, she said casually.
Sherrie-Lee looked at her.
That’s what your sister said. She said you’d done a runner.
Nah, just been away for a while. That’s a nice phone.
It doesn’t work. She held it up so Sherrie-Lee could see the dead screen. I bought it from Derek for a quid. Keeley Downes was wearing a sparkly blue top with three coloured buttons on each of the shoulder straps. Sherrie-Lee used to feel jealous of her at primary school because of the fancy clothes she sometimes wore. And because she always got school dinners. When Sherrie-Lee had asked why she couldn’t have them, the teacher said that your mum had to fill in an application form to get school meals for free. She didn’t ask again.
Keeley Downes had a younger brother too who was an arsonist. He had burned down a number of sheds and small buildings before they took him away somewhere. Keeley Downes had said that it wasn’t him that had done all that setting fire to things, but people had noticed that after he’d been taken away, all the fires had stopped – which in the eyes of everyone had been evidence enough. But Sherrie-Lee wasn’t so sure. She’d always liked the way she’d stuck up for her brother. Arsonist or not. It was important to stick up for something.
She watched as Keeley Downes stopped looking at her phone. Then Sherrie-Lee thought, suppose she says something to someone. She didn’t want stories of herself not being missing being told, not right now.
So, she said to her, stepping closer. Don’t tell anyone you’ve seen me, Keeley Downes, that’s very important, see. An’ don’t tell anyone this either, I’ve been taken by scientists. Who knows, they might just be from another planet. I don’t know where they’re from, but they’re a weird bunch. Doing all kinds of research here, it’s not just me. It’s lots of other kids too. They keep us all in cages, in this long white room. I know what you think, that that’s pretty fucked up, but that’s just the best way to fit us all in for experiments.
What kind of experiments? Keeley Downes said. One of her eyelids was continually lowered like she had a lazy eye or something. Sherrie-Lee kept trying not to look at it.
I can’t tell you that. But it’s bad stuff. She looked off into the distance, for effect, so that Keeley Downes could see how serious and tragic it all was. Anyway, Keeley Downes, I’ve got to go now. Sherrie-Lee got off the swing and turned to face her in one movement. And remember, she said tapping her nose twice.
Keeley Downes just looked at her, her unafflicted eye was wide and incredulous, watching the older girl as she got up and began to walk away. How come they let you go, then? she asked, but Sherrie-Lee didn’t answer.
Now, she thought, as she was walking off, if she told anyone, she’d tell them all the crazy stuff too and nobody would believe any of it. She knew Keeley Downes would be watching her as she walked away. She didn’t look back. She didn’t want to spoil the effect. She was planning something, though she was not quite sure herself what it would be, but she knew that whatever it was, it would be useful if people still thought of her as missing. She felt that it gave her some sort of power, and that was essential to the illusion of it, to stay one step ahead of everyone else.
She pulled out the stone from her pocket, turning it over, so the smooth part was under her thumb. She moved her thumb over the surface, thinking about the extinction of the planet, the fires burning in Australia, the doom awaiting just around the next corner. If all the animals died off, they could be preserved in the stones, like fossils – just like had happened to the dinosaurs, until the Earth had shaken off all the humans and recovered itself, and the animals could come out of their fossil hideouts. Though it made her even more sad to get to the end of this fantasy because deep in her heart she knew it couldn’t be true, despite what those Jurassic Park films said. She kept thinking about it and trying to make a story out of it, but it was too depressing. And those fires would be burning all the fossils. She’d seen stones reshaped and melted by the heat. Stones from volcanoes melted and bubbled into different shapes. And the whole lot was just pointless nonsense. People would rather spend fifty quid on a handbag than pay 10p more for stuff that didn’t at the same time kill all the bees and the birds and the polar bears. That’s how fucked up all of it was. Sometimes it made her want to scream and cry and kick something or hold a bolt gun to her head and shoot the cool metal bolt right through her hot angry brain. People really stank, they deserved to become extinct, but all the other creatures, they didn’t deserve it. They didn’t deserve being burned alive. She’d seen the images on the news. The bodies of kangaroos piled up near the fences which separated the burnt out forest from the road, where they had tried to escape from the fires. Rows and rows of dead kangaroos. Why the hell didn’t people knock down the fences? Or make a hole in them? The hollowness from that evening of the lost species came back. A wretchedness that could never be overcome by anything. She threw the stone as far as she could across the rec. She looked the other way so she didn’t wait to see where it landed. So she couldn’t be tempted to go and pick it up again. What was the use even of real fossils?
10
Bob realised now, as he walked along the edge of the park, that he was already looking forward to autumn, when the trees would start to change colour and the first of the season’s cold would start to chill the air. Even as a boy it had been his favourite season. He liked going back to school. There was a point in the summer when the days seemed to get tired of themselves, ready for a change.
When he approached the corner where the mini-supermarket was, Bob thought again about what they could have for dinner. Though again the same things came into his head, even though he’d tried to think of something else that kids might like. He had been thinking about Zadie. It was time for her to go home. She’d had the same clothes on for nearly two weeks. He could offer to take them to the laundrette with his stuff, but no, that would be too much like inviting her to stay. This way she’d go home when she got too smelly. Not to be too mean about her, too personal, but she was heading that way already. You could smell the sweat when she was in the same room. Gina was right when she had said that he let himself get drawn into things too easily. He had defended himself when she had said it, but it was true. Gina was right about most things, he’d have to admit that, at least to himself, even if he didn’t always want to admit it to her in person. It was not that he didn’t feel sympathetic towards the kid, because he did. But there was a neediness about her, beneath all the show, that he didn’t like. It unsettled him. He didn’t like the weight of other people’s needs and expectations. He’d let too many people down. His own mother, especially. And he’d never really had the chance to make it up to her. He’d imagined, while he was inside, taking her to nice places, showing her that he was doing good in things, that he was making things right. She was a nice lady. The best kind of person, really, and didn’t deserve the kind of shame he’d laid at her doorstep. She never said anything like that, but he knew she would have felt the shame of him being inside. What all her friends would have been saying behind her back. He thought of that last letter he’d had from her. The straightforward humbleness of it.
Anyway, I’ve got to go. My dad will be back soon.
It wasn’t true that people would believe anything, because there was a lot of stuff that people were not willing to believe. It was also noticeable that the things they were not prepared to believe were often real and true. That was the funny thing about people. They’d believe any old nonsense if it fitted in with the nonsense they already believed, but tell them something that was true and it was like, hey, enough of that. The way they looked at her sometimes when she talked about stuff like climate chaos and species extinction, as if she was making the whole thing up and they weren’t going to be fooled into believing any of that rubbish. People had a low threshold for truth and even for words. People who lived around here, and where she came from too, weren’t that big on words – they were just something like a rough tool, like a tin opener, made to function just enough for the practical getting on with things. That’s how it was for most people. They didn’t see any urgency to increase the amount of words in use or to find just the right word for the job. In fact, there was a kind of distrust of language precision and fancy words in general. These were things, in themselves, to be avoided. Better a few words for a lot of things than a lot of words for a few things. Sherrie-Lee had noticed often and given a lot of time to thinking about it. Apart from the occasional oddball like Dammo Taylor, who did use a variety of words that people weren’t accustomed to using – he used them to show other people up, and for this reason alone was disliked by almost everyone. Disliked and not to be trusted. People teased him about eating dictionaries for breakfast and washing his mouth out to get rid of the excess of words. New words, out-of-the-ordinary words were regarded as suspect. This was why vocabularies were kept at a bare minimum and new words took a while to assimilate, if it was possible to admit them at all. They had to be accepted more generally among people first, they couldn’t just be brandished about and thrown in whenever. Dammo Taylor could attest to that, if he cared to. More than once, she’d seen him with a black eye and heard stories that he’d gone overboard with his vocabulary usage and had not heeded any warnings. Though there were contradictions to this too, she’d noticed. Like the speed with which new slang was adopted, running wildfire immediately, especially those words that annoyed Sherrie-Lee the most.
*
She wondered what Bob was doing at his job at the call centre. She’d seen a picture of one. All the people sat in rows with computer screens and headphones. They spent all day calling people. One after the other. Each of the people in the rows endlessly calling people. The phone bills must be massive. And it wasn’t just the place where Bob worked. There were hundreds of these places. Thousands of them. The telephone lines reaching into people’s homes, people in the middle of hoovering, in the middle of putting the tea on or having an argument, and then their phones rang. She imagined them stopping what they were doing, looking over at the phone when it started ringing – even though a ringing phone never looked any different than a phone that was not ringing – going over to the phone, picking it up and then being disappointed. All those stupid questions and offers going from one part of the earth to another, when that could have been space for real connection. That’s what it all seemed like from what Sherrie-Lee knew about them. Imagine if all those people, instead of pointlessly ringing people up who didn’t want to speak to them, had something real or useful to do, like cleaning up habitats or teaching people to care about animals, or just making conversation with someone who hadn’t spoken to anyone for three days, how much better the world would be. It seemed like a problem that would be easy to solve if people really wanted to solve it.
9
For days now, Sherrie-Lee had needed to go home to get extra clothes. She had worn her underwear inside-out, back-to-front, and back-to-front-inside-out, all the possible ways it was to wear them to get the most use out of them, and then started again from the beginning. There was other stuff she could do with too. She had been putting off going home, finding other things to do. But today, it was becoming urgent. Walking through her estate Sherrie-Lee didn’t see anyone, which was unusual, she thought. As though it wasn’t just Sherrie-Lee who had gone AWOL. She couldn’t even see anyone in their windows and gardens, though it was a sunny day. She saw all the familiar things that she saw every time she walked through the estate. The house with the trampoline. The corner section of grass with the overgrown privet hedge. The gate that had come off its hinges. The pink bird house on a post in the middle of a lawn that no self-respecting bird would ever sink to using. Sherrie-Lee picked up a stone, ovalish and grey, with white markings on one side. She would take it for Joshy, for his collection of fossils. None of them were really fossils, except the ammonite she’d nicked from Courtney McKinnley. And even that didn’t look like much more than a stone from one side, which meant that the stones could pass for fossils too. She picked only the ones that looked like real fossils. She had found most of them for him. She thought he liked them because they were creatures trapped inside something, a bit like he was trapped inside himself not being able to talk properly. Sometimes, he got frustrated because of that, especially at school.
He’d even been excluded a few times because of it. The markings on this one was a bit like the underside of a beetle, with lines criss-crossing like squashed traces of legs. That’s what she’d tell him it was, the fossil of an ancient kind of beetle, bigger than the modern beetles. All the prehistoric creatures were giant, except the prehistoric horses. They were tiny. She put the stone in her pocket. She liked fossils because they were not what they appeared to be. It was incredible, really, that something alive could be turned to stone like that. And exist as a stone for all those millions of years, looking like a stone but having the trace of something else hidden inside it. A trace that could only be seen if you knew something about them already. So many things were like that. She thought of all the times she’d walked around with Joshy looking at stones that might be fossils. Sometimes he found one that didn’t even look anything like a fossil, but if he fixed himself on keeping it there was nothing she could do to persuade him otherwise, even though it grated a bit to have one that wasn’t even a good impostor in the collection. The collection felt like it was hers as well, she’d found so many of the stones.
She walked past her Aunty Susan’s old flat. Someone else was living in it now. There was lots of stuff strewn over the front garden. Stuff waiting to be cleared away. She stopped and looked in. Among all the rubbish there was half of a vase. It was exactly half, broken down the middle as though it had been chopped in half. She’d seen a lot of broken things, but never something that had broken like that, so perfectly. Stepping inside the garden, she turned the half-vase with her foot to get a good look at the pattern. It was her aunt’s sparkly vase. Sherrie-Lee remembered the summer before she died, how she had obsessed about this vase in one of the shop windows in town. As though if she could have it, it would have transformative powers. It was more than just a vase. Sherrie-Lee had thought at the time that if it had been smaller, she would have got it for her and then, with bigger things, how you just needed more bravado. Just pick it up, pretend to be looking at it in the light, then just walk out with it. Soon after that she’d saved up anyway and bought the thing. When she got it home, she polished up the table so she could put it there. Sherrie-Lee had helped her. A whole crowd of people went round and sat on the sofa and looked at that big vase, up there on the table, like it had some magical qualities. Someone had said that it was so shiny and smooth-looking, like glass. Someone else had asked how they got all those sparkles inside. Sherrie-Lee herself had wondered that, because all the sparkles seemed to be just under the surface. It’s just a vase, someone else said, and they had a point. How much did you say it was? £14.99? And they made a huffing sound which meant Jesus, I wouldn’t pay half that for it. Someone else reassured her aunt and said it was a bargain. That one day it might be worth something, even though nobody believed that, and everyone laughed. All its magic seemed gone then, and people started to leave. In all the time her aunt had had it she’d never seen any flowers in it and now, here it was. It would never hold anything now. All those dreams gone too. And although she was only twelve and it seemed crazy to put so much into one fifteen quid vase, she felt kind of slumped and out of energy. That some bought possession had seemed charged with all kinds of power and importance, and to look at it now, broken and useless and stripped of meaning, seemed appalling and terrible.
She didn’t want to go back to her own house now, the way she was thinking. Everything felt drawn down and over. There was a kind of hopelessness about the place. Even walking down the street she felt it. She couldn’t find the right word to think of the kind of sadness it was. It was more than just one sadness for one life unlived; it was wider than that – for all the unlived lives, where nothing ever happened and even the everyday ordinariness gets cocked up over and over again. For no real reason other than from being here. Of never being able to escape, or have enough money or hope or chance. She crossed the empty road towards the park. It seemed strange that there was no one around. She thought about all the past, and how sad it was that it was all gone. The people, their voices, all gone, because they were nobody important. All their stories gone too. There was nobody even to uphold the memories of them because people only valued the wrong kind of stuff. She sat on a swing. The metal chain creaked loudly and slowly as she began to move it gently, her foot pivoted against the special tarmac beneath. The sound made the hollowness inside her spread, threaten to overflow.
As she sat, Sherrie-Lee saw Keeley Downes, who was a year younger than she was, climb over the low fence of the park and come over to sit by her. Everybody called her Keeley Downes, never just Keeley, or Downes like everyone called her older brother. She didn’t look at her, or say hello, she just came to sit by her. Sherrie-Lee was just glad to see another person, someone she knew.
Where is everyone? She asked.
Keeley Downes shrugged.
Shouldn’t you be in school? Sherrie-Lee said to her.
Shouldn’t you?
Keeley Downes took a phone from her back pocket, and dragged her finger across the screen in a practised way.
Thought you were proper missing, she said casually.
Sherrie-Lee looked at her.
That’s what your sister said. She said you’d done a runner.
Nah, just been away for a while. That’s a nice phone.
It doesn’t work. She held it up so Sherrie-Lee could see the dead screen. I bought it from Derek for a quid. Keeley Downes was wearing a sparkly blue top with three coloured buttons on each of the shoulder straps. Sherrie-Lee used to feel jealous of her at primary school because of the fancy clothes she sometimes wore. And because she always got school dinners. When Sherrie-Lee had asked why she couldn’t have them, the teacher said that your mum had to fill in an application form to get school meals for free. She didn’t ask again.
Keeley Downes had a younger brother too who was an arsonist. He had burned down a number of sheds and small buildings before they took him away somewhere. Keeley Downes had said that it wasn’t him that had done all that setting fire to things, but people had noticed that after he’d been taken away, all the fires had stopped – which in the eyes of everyone had been evidence enough. But Sherrie-Lee wasn’t so sure. She’d always liked the way she’d stuck up for her brother. Arsonist or not. It was important to stick up for something.
She watched as Keeley Downes stopped looking at her phone. Then Sherrie-Lee thought, suppose she says something to someone. She didn’t want stories of herself not being missing being told, not right now.
So, she said to her, stepping closer. Don’t tell anyone you’ve seen me, Keeley Downes, that’s very important, see. An’ don’t tell anyone this either, I’ve been taken by scientists. Who knows, they might just be from another planet. I don’t know where they’re from, but they’re a weird bunch. Doing all kinds of research here, it’s not just me. It’s lots of other kids too. They keep us all in cages, in this long white room. I know what you think, that that’s pretty fucked up, but that’s just the best way to fit us all in for experiments.
What kind of experiments? Keeley Downes said. One of her eyelids was continually lowered like she had a lazy eye or something. Sherrie-Lee kept trying not to look at it.
I can’t tell you that. But it’s bad stuff. She looked off into the distance, for effect, so that Keeley Downes could see how serious and tragic it all was. Anyway, Keeley Downes, I’ve got to go now. Sherrie-Lee got off the swing and turned to face her in one movement. And remember, she said tapping her nose twice.
Keeley Downes just looked at her, her unafflicted eye was wide and incredulous, watching the older girl as she got up and began to walk away. How come they let you go, then? she asked, but Sherrie-Lee didn’t answer.
Now, she thought, as she was walking off, if she told anyone, she’d tell them all the crazy stuff too and nobody would believe any of it. She knew Keeley Downes would be watching her as she walked away. She didn’t look back. She didn’t want to spoil the effect. She was planning something, though she was not quite sure herself what it would be, but she knew that whatever it was, it would be useful if people still thought of her as missing. She felt that it gave her some sort of power, and that was essential to the illusion of it, to stay one step ahead of everyone else.
She pulled out the stone from her pocket, turning it over, so the smooth part was under her thumb. She moved her thumb over the surface, thinking about the extinction of the planet, the fires burning in Australia, the doom awaiting just around the next corner. If all the animals died off, they could be preserved in the stones, like fossils – just like had happened to the dinosaurs, until the Earth had shaken off all the humans and recovered itself, and the animals could come out of their fossil hideouts. Though it made her even more sad to get to the end of this fantasy because deep in her heart she knew it couldn’t be true, despite what those Jurassic Park films said. She kept thinking about it and trying to make a story out of it, but it was too depressing. And those fires would be burning all the fossils. She’d seen stones reshaped and melted by the heat. Stones from volcanoes melted and bubbled into different shapes. And the whole lot was just pointless nonsense. People would rather spend fifty quid on a handbag than pay 10p more for stuff that didn’t at the same time kill all the bees and the birds and the polar bears. That’s how fucked up all of it was. Sometimes it made her want to scream and cry and kick something or hold a bolt gun to her head and shoot the cool metal bolt right through her hot angry brain. People really stank, they deserved to become extinct, but all the other creatures, they didn’t deserve it. They didn’t deserve being burned alive. She’d seen the images on the news. The bodies of kangaroos piled up near the fences which separated the burnt out forest from the road, where they had tried to escape from the fires. Rows and rows of dead kangaroos. Why the hell didn’t people knock down the fences? Or make a hole in them? The hollowness from that evening of the lost species came back. A wretchedness that could never be overcome by anything. She threw the stone as far as she could across the rec. She looked the other way so she didn’t wait to see where it landed. So she couldn’t be tempted to go and pick it up again. What was the use even of real fossils?
10
Bob realised now, as he walked along the edge of the park, that he was already looking forward to autumn, when the trees would start to change colour and the first of the season’s cold would start to chill the air. Even as a boy it had been his favourite season. He liked going back to school. There was a point in the summer when the days seemed to get tired of themselves, ready for a change.
When he approached the corner where the mini-supermarket was, Bob thought again about what they could have for dinner. Though again the same things came into his head, even though he’d tried to think of something else that kids might like. He had been thinking about Zadie. It was time for her to go home. She’d had the same clothes on for nearly two weeks. He could offer to take them to the laundrette with his stuff, but no, that would be too much like inviting her to stay. This way she’d go home when she got too smelly. Not to be too mean about her, too personal, but she was heading that way already. You could smell the sweat when she was in the same room. Gina was right when she had said that he let himself get drawn into things too easily. He had defended himself when she had said it, but it was true. Gina was right about most things, he’d have to admit that, at least to himself, even if he didn’t always want to admit it to her in person. It was not that he didn’t feel sympathetic towards the kid, because he did. But there was a neediness about her, beneath all the show, that he didn’t like. It unsettled him. He didn’t like the weight of other people’s needs and expectations. He’d let too many people down. His own mother, especially. And he’d never really had the chance to make it up to her. He’d imagined, while he was inside, taking her to nice places, showing her that he was doing good in things, that he was making things right. She was a nice lady. The best kind of person, really, and didn’t deserve the kind of shame he’d laid at her doorstep. She never said anything like that, but he knew she would have felt the shame of him being inside. What all her friends would have been saying behind her back. He thought of that last letter he’d had from her. The straightforward humbleness of it.
