Good For Nothing, page 13
‘No, but seriously –’ Kemi’s voice drifted back on the stale air from the front of the vehicle – ‘this is your car, right? Why did you pick … this?’
PC Chris adjusted the smiley-face scent diffuser hanging off the mirror. ‘I like it.’ He grabbed his too-big sunglasses from the glove dispenser. Turned on the A/C. ‘I think it’s cool.’
Kemi caught my eye in the side mirror. I could tell she was trying really hard not to laugh.
Kemi was the first one out of the van, too, when we had to stop and deliver to our first street.
‘There’s one special house that really needs a reminder about preventing home burglaries,’ PC Chris said as we crunched up to an uphill kerb. ‘And the one next door to that house, well, that one really needs a reminder about police-mandated cycle safety. Come to think of it, the whole street needs reminders of Friesly Metropolitan Police looking out for them. Might as well deliver leaflets to everyone.’
PC Chris’s tone made him sound like a stranger to the street, a tourist. Someone who could think of our slanty, hilly bit of town as more of a project than a final product. He looked like he didn’t fit in, too, sitting up all sweaty in the driver’s seat, elbow out of the window, a layer of sun lotion shining white over his acne-dotted skin.
Seeing him, the hard feeling came up from inside of me. I wanted so badly to go home, abandon Kemi and Eman, do anything but this. Then I pictured my mum’s face. I saw her seeing me, a police volunteer, a kid so good at messing up. I pushed the hard feeling down.
‘How fast do you think we could get this street done?’ Kemi said, with this big-dimpled smile on her face. Her entire body poised like a spring, all ready to go. That was usually what she looked like in PE lessons on the school field, too. ‘D’you guys think there’s a record for delivering leaflets? Shall I time us?’
Me and Eman just stared at her. That street was packed full of overgrown hedges, green flies and midges just waiting to bite us. It stretched out, rows and rows of terraced houses. The kerbs, dusty and dry. Tough as a sore throat.
‘However long it takes,’ I said, as I brought out the leaflets from the back. ‘It still won’t be quick enough.’
Kemi grinned. She took double copies of everything. ‘Is that a challenge?’
She ran to as many houses as she could, posting the shiny paper through the doors like the front gardens we crossed weren’t obstacle courses of cheap plastic toys and half-sunken trampolines. I don’t think she even cared about whether anyone was watching her from the inside. Net curtains twitching a bit. Sunshine reflecting off loft windows. Shadows and the sound of moving feet behind all the peeling front doors.
She was just back in Sports Day mode. The girl I’d seen win countless races, carry countless medals, wander aimlessly around the school field with the end-of-race ribbon still colliding with her waist, searching for a family member to gloat to. I don’t think she ever stopped being in Sports Day mode.
It looked like PC Chris never stopped being in Bad Driver mode either. Later that day, he forgot to pull the handbrake up when we were parked even higher uphill on that street – so busy with summer-break traffic – and the car started rolling back. The rest of us were outside, watching it move. I yelled at him to pull it up already as he panicked at the wheel.
He pulled it up. Then he just stared at me from inside the car. ‘You haven’t got a licence, Amir. Why do you know how to do that?’
I stared back. ‘And you haven’t got a brain. Otherwise you would’ve known to pull the handbrake up.’
I carried on delivering the stupid leaflets so that I wouldn’t have to hear him ask Kemi and Eman about my attitude, my anger, the ‘thuggish’ razor slit in my eyebrow, the possibility of my underage driving. Had they seen me driving around? Had they reported it? Had anyone?
‘What an idiot.’ I stood outside an untidy front garden, cap off so I could wipe the sweat dripping down my face, the tarmac below my Nikes almost bleeding from the heat. ‘Who doesn’t know to pull the handbrake up after you finish parking?’
I felt eyes watching me though. Sizing up the angle of my shoulders, the back of my head. Almost-familiar whispers in breezeless gardens as Kemi and Eman followed after me.
‘Just ignore him,’ Kemi said at my side. ‘He’s not that bad if you just don’t take him seriously. Right, Eman?’
Eman looked at Kemi. ‘Um, yeah.’
I started walking away from them. ‘You lot don’t get it.’
Kemi and Eman shared a look. I didn’t know what it meant. To be honest, I didn’t care. The heat was at its worst at midday, coating all of Friesly in a disgusting sort of thickness, while PC Chris’s sunglasses glinted harshly from inside the car. And we still had so many leaflets to deliver.
But those eyes I’d felt on me, tracking me in between hedges and overgrown weeds, suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Those front-garden whispers not whispers any more.
‘Amir?’ I knew Hassan Jalani’s voice straight away. On a FIFA call and in real life. ‘Amir, yara. What you doing on my street?’
He looked confused, all round around the stomach and panting from the run up to the kerb. Sweat separating the strands of his hair and plastering them down on his forehead. My best mate since nursery.
Of course I’d know him anywhere in the world. Me, Hassan and Abshir used to play tig at the mosque when my brother and their dads were doing extra sunnah prayers. Us three went everywhere together. Ben Stockdale too, who’s Abshir’s next-door neighbour, and funny because he’s fostered and he knows more swear words than even me and Hassan. In bare languages.
Sure enough, Abshir came running after Hassan, a half-deflated football in his hands, his limbs so tall and thin, his wiry hair moving, as he told Hassan to hurry up already, they were already thrashing Ben and his foster sister Kay 3–1.
From somewhere behind the mess of low stone walls, overgrown hedges and peeling front doors, I heard Ben yell at them to stop lying, the echo growing clearer as his head emerged over a red-brick garden wall, blond-haired and swearing and – eventually – walking towards us.
‘Eh?’ I stared at all of them in turn, confused.
It only took a few seconds of looking around – noticing the same sawed-off trees in the back gardens, the same lines of washing going from wall to wall, the same creaky electric pylon out front, the same massive barking guard dog down the road – to realize I was on Hassan’s street after all.
‘Oi, man,’ I said, prolonging the ‘a’ like a yawn. ‘I thought you lot were too busy with your families to hang out before Results Day. Isn’t your sister getting married soon, Hassan?’
Hassan started fiddling with the string on his fake Gucci pouch. ‘Yeah, Neelam the big giant’s getting locked down. So what?’
Abshir held the half-deflated football protectively in his arms. ‘We all had today free, innit. We thought you were busy helping out at Nishaan, being a good son and that.’
Hassan let his fake Gucci pouch rest by his waist. He puffed up his chest, wandering closer and closer to where Kemi and Eman were standing.
‘Yeah, it’s not our fault you lied to us.’
He missed the awkward look the two of them shared.
‘What are you even doing these days?’ Ben’s eyes zoomed in on the leaflets. ‘Selling pound phone cards to call Pakistan? Our neighbour does that. Give us some then. I’ll call your grandad. Give us it!’
Abshir ignored Ben and Hassan trying to wrestle those leaflets out of my grip. ‘Leave it.’ He grinned. ‘Obviously, he’s only doing it to impress these girls. Astaghfirullah, bro. That’s bare haram.’
I really didn’t want to look back at Kemi and Eman. My stomach felt weird, thinking of Eman’s hands, so careful with the seat belt.
‘Chill out, alright? I’m not trying to impress them.’
Ben’s freckles got darker in the sun. He bounced his eyebrows up and down. ‘Are you sure about that?’
I didn’t know what to say.
‘Why do you lot care anyways?’ Kemi called over, crossing her arms over her chest. ‘Are you jealous? Are you jealous you don’t hang out with girls? Eman, I think they’re jealous.’
‘Yeah.’ Eman looked at Kemi. I didn’t know if she was already looking back at me. It was hard to tell because of the sun. She crossed her arms, too. ‘You’re jealous.’
Hassan, Abshir and Ben lapsed into an uncomfortable second-long silence. Then Abshir let out the donkey-braying sound I recognized as his fake laugh, the one he did when his dad told him off for putting his feet on the table at home. Hassan and Ben joined in pretty quickly. The three of them wiping tears from their eyes, holding their stomachs, practically begging Kemi and Eman to be serious, stop making them laugh. My best friends, the worst liars ever.
I tried to think of an excuse for my not hanging out with them.
I tried to think of something that wouldn’t have their mums shut the door on me at future birthdays, their dads ‘humph’ and sigh and mention my cousin who seemed better, more honest, a worthier friend, at the mention of my name.
I mean, I knew my mates didn’t think of me like that anyway. No matter what their parents thought. Or how many detentions I had at school. Or what people said about Zayd. But I wanted them to believe it fully. Properly. Not when they were defending me from other people, but beyond that. Even in the quiet moments, when they were just thinking of me. Just me, Amir Ali, who they’d known since nursery, who always got the ball when it went flying over a wall, who always had gum and a good laugh for them.
PC Chris pressed hard on the middle of the steering wheel. ‘If I don’t see movement in the next ten seconds, you’ve all failed the Volunteering4Friesly programme! Chop-chop!’
Kemi and Eman jumped to deliver the leaflets, their heart rates picking up in a second. I’m not gonna lie, so did mine.
‘Who was that?’ Abshir said before I could turn around and just get on with the leaflets. He was already tall, but he made himself even taller to see who was sat in the driver’s seat. Then his eyes got big.
‘Amir, man.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Are you in trouble with the police?’
Hassan shook his head. ‘Nah, he’s not. He’s not, they’re just targeting him, innit?’
I smiled. He really was my best mate.
Ben bumped my fist with his. ‘Safe, g. Look after yourself.’
‘You lot,’ I said, ‘text me when you’re playing FIFA.’
The trees on Hassan’s street brought up a lot of dappled sunlight. Little bits of gold and yellow, shimmering like bits of glitter in the art box in nursery. It felt like it was coming down on me, twinkling, warming my eyelids, as I set to delivering the leaflets again. I reached the doors on the opposite side of Kemi and Eman’s route with ease.
‘You sure you’re not in trouble with the police?’ Hassan yelled from the tarmac, the last of my mates to head back to their football game.
I put up a thumbs-up, just joking around. ‘You know I only give them trouble!’
He laughed. PC Chris was a faint shadow sat in the parked car. But I recognized the thin line of his mouth. The downturned corners. I bit my lip. I shoved a bunch of leaflets through the letter box before me. And again. And again. Again, again, again.
‘Amir,’ Eman said when our route started to become the same, right at the very bottom of the cul-de-sac. I glanced at her, in next door’s front garden. I don’t know how long she’d been watching me, but my instinct was to see if she needed more leaflets. I went to give her mine.
‘Wait,’ she said.
And I paused, halfway through putting my stack of dodgy doorstep caller and neighbourhood watch leaflets into her hands. ‘What?’
Her words came out all awkward. ‘I heard what you were saying to your friends just now. About … About giving the police trouble. And, well, y-you aren’t trying to turn out like your brother, are you?’
I froze. ‘What?’
A drug dealer. A criminal.
While we stood shaded by front-porch roofs, by too-tall trees and the birds cawing in them, I wondered what she knew about him. I wondered what anyone knew about him while they were all running their mouths.
Kemi barely seemed out of breath after hopping over someone’s creaky side gate. ‘I’ve got more leaflets if you guys want them.’ She glanced between the two of us, her eyes settling uncomfortably on Eman and then on me. ‘You know, these ones? The cycling ones? I don’t think you guys have those ones. Let me check –’
‘Wait, what do you mean by that?’ I held my hand up for a second. Suddenly everything seemed so loud. PC Chris hammering down on the steering wheel. Lights and sirens in the distance. ‘About my brother? And not turning out like him?’
Eman’s gaze was big and round. She was all eyelashes. And rubber bracelets, different-coloured ones, on her wrist. She pulled at them awkwardly. It irritated me somehow, how new she felt to this conversation, how she didn’t already know Zayd by heart.
‘Farida aunty says he died because he was a drug dealer. He was in trouble with the police. And now … you’re … Well, I don’t really want that to happen to you, too.’
I heard her say that. But everything in the world sucked itself free of sound straight afterwards.
So I didn’t hear PC Chris get out of the car, door slamming, telling us to get a move on. I didn’t feel Kemi dragging my shirt sleeve, saying none of us knew the full story, none of us knew what had happened to Zayd, so I couldn’t be mad if Eman didn’t know. Well, even Kemi didn’t really know if he’d been a dealer or not.
The people on that street came out in their sun-bathing vests and thin linen shalwar kameez to ask us about the leaflets, complaining about their blocked letter boxes. Aeroplanes hummed up in the sky, left trails of white smoke behind them like angels’ wings. Cars revved in and out of drives. Blocked the road. Caused arguments. Somewhere in town, a thief set off a shop alarm. Qasim Mahmood came out yelling about the CCTV. Tourists clicked their photographs around Sir William Barker’s statue.
The whole world went on, messy and loud and shouting at me. Yelling at me. Even Eman’s big eyes. Even her eyelashes.
She blinked and it was a tidal wave of noise, and lies, and rubbish.
She blinked and I looked away.
I didn’t mean to slam our front door later that evening. But I did.
‘What’s going on?’ Fiza said from where she sat in the living room, feeding Maximus tap water with a child’s medicinal syringe. I ran up the stairs to my bedroom, our old bedroom, and to the underwear drawer in the corner.
‘Amir!’ She followed after me, stood in the doorway as my fingers felt for the familiar ink, the familiar smell, for Zakiya Bhatti’s name, and then Zayd’s. Zayd’s. ‘Amir?’
CHAPTER 11
Eman
I don’t really like it when things are quiet. The backstreets, lit up by a single streetlamp, no animals howling or insects chirping because it’s too warm to move even a single muscle.
It’s funny, in its own way. Because the quiet seems to follow me around. It always has. But I’ve never wanted it to. I don’t want it to.
Yet it shoves itself into the walls of my life. Like mould. Like moss. It gets past the locks of other people’s loudness in my life: Nani’s laughter while telling me to stop skidding with my socks on the kitchen floor and the slow murmur of my mum’s car driving over the small gravel stones of our driveway.
The aunties speaking without apology in the launderette, bickering over care packages for the homeless and who’ll deal with Azrah aunty’s dramatic demands next. The light from the TV in our living room and my video games nestled under my pillow. The neighbourhood kids practising their Qur’an in the other room, rocking on their heels, letting the Arabic alphabet give them some momentum.
The quiet pushes itself around all of that. It makes itself at home in its absence. Like a thief in the night. Like an intruder.
So that even when my ears start hurting from too much loudness, my head suddenly heavy with it – in our old house, from the chaos of my mum’s shrieks and my dad’s punching swears – I still don’t miss the quiet I’m so used to. It hurts. Amir’s silence – his hands shoved inside his basketball shorts, his eyes cast down to the ground on the drive back to the station – bruised like a shove to the ribs.
And I was sorry. I really was. But I didn’t know what I was sorry for.
It was an early finish after we’d delivered leaflets to a few streets. The centre of town was still busy with afternoon shoppers, Danny Dangar’s familiar loping figure there among them as usual. The summer heat drying the leaves on neighbourhood trees and dropping leaves on to the roofs of parked cars. Shop windows made pretty with striped summer awnings, glinting mercilessly in the sun.
‘I expect tomorrow to be better,’ said PC Chris, battling against the sound of a mechanical fan in the stuffy warmth of the police station. He had a map filled with leaflet delivery locations safely downloaded on his phone.
‘I expect I’ll only have good things to report to PC Phillips tomorrow.’
He did the whole thing of looking at Amir when he said that.
He even made him stay behind so that they could talk about Amir’s friends distracting him. Something to do with ‘focus’ and ‘being a negative influence’. Kemi and I left him sitting on the stained sofa alone, the defeated curve of his neck suggesting a lack of appreciation for PC Chris’s words.
I remembered where I’d heard it before though – that stuff about his brother. It was in the launderette.
Nani had always hated how the police tried to lead her and her walking stick home if they came across her on one of her evening walks in Fowley Park, always smiling at the trainers glowing white under her shalwar kameez, always scaring her with their politeness.
Once, those good manners made her trip so bad in the cool twilight that her thick googly glasses almost fell off her face.
‘Soorney,’ she’d sworn at them afterwards from the safety of the tiny wooden bench in Wash ‘n’ Wear afterwards. ‘What do they think I am? A weakling who can’t find her own way home? I’m old, not stupid.’
