A Song for Issy Bradley (39 page)

Zippy looks up from the phone. Cars stop on the yellow zigzags, dropping kids off, even though they’re not supposed to; cyclists jump the curb, weaving in and out of pedestrians, and another
double-decker bus hisses as it pulls in at the stop just down the road. How many of these people have seen the photograph?

Lauren returns to Facebook. There are more comments now. People are probably checking their notifications as they arrive at school, before they have to switch their phones off and put them away. Soon everyone will have seen it.

“I’m going home.” She rubs her cold hands together and makes sure her coat is fastened right to the top.

“What, now?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t be daft. I can comment. Let’s think of something to explain why you were dressed like that, something that’s not religious.”

“There isn’t a good explanation—not one that’ll sound normal, anyway.” The cold of the wall seeps into Zippy’s thighs and bottom.

“I’ll report the photo—I’ll say it’s offensive and ask Facebook to take it down.”

“Everyone’s seen it.”

“So let’s think of something I can say to make them all fuck off and stop making fun of you.” Lauren glances at the phone again. “Oh God, Adam’s commented.”

Zippy digs the fingernails of one hand into the palm of the other and waits for Lauren to read the comment.

“OK, this is what he said:
‘Chillax people! It was just a Halloween party. Ur looking at the Bride of Frankenstein
—
she’s well scary! Not married! Get a life
—
4realz!
’ ” She slings her arm around Zippy’s shoulder and squeezes. “There you are, settled! God, what a drama! Come on.”

“I’m going home.”

“He only called you the Bride of Frankenstein to shut everyone up. You can’t just go home. What’ll your mum say?”

“Nothing.”

“As if. She’ll give you the third degree.”

“No she won’t.”

“Oh God, don’t look now, it’s Adam.”

Zippy looks. President Carmichael has stopped his Jag on the yellow zigzags and Adam is climbing out, bag slung over his shoulder, phone in hand.

“You should ask him how the picture got on Facebook. And he should make a groveling apology for being such a knob. He’s coming over.” Lauren drops her arm, stands, and rearranges her school bag. “I’ll see you in a bit. I’m glad you’re not married—it was freaking me out.”

Zippy stands as Adam approaches. She looks at the pavement when he starts to speak.

“Do you know about the photo?”

Head down, she nods. “Why did you do it?”

“I didn’t! I don’t even know how … Did
you
put it in my bag?”

His shoes are dirty. He’ll have to clean them better when he goes on his mission. She rummages in her coat for a tissue.

“What did you do that for? I didn’t give it to Ethan, you know,” he says. “He must’ve found it when he was getting the ball out of my bag the other day. He’ll have done it for a laugh. I’ll get him to delete it.”

She finds a tissue and pulls it out of her pocket.

“And I’ll get it back for you, if you like.”

She doesn’t want the photo. It was meant to be for him; he said he liked her in the wedding dress. If he keeps it, he’ll be able to look at her dressed like a bride. She doesn’t need a prop to help her imagine marrying him, but he might find it useful to have the photo—Sister Campbell says men are
“visual creatures.”

“It’s OK, I don’t want it,” she says.

“Fine. Neither do I.”

“Oh.” Her voice sounds small and whiny. “I thought you’d like to … well, just chuck it in the trash then.”

She crouches and rubs at the dirt on the toe of his shoe with the tissue.

“What’re you doing?”

“Cleaning your shoes.”

“My mum’ll clean them. Don’t—get up.” He steps back and as she straightens, she finally looks up at him properly.

“What were you going to say? You thought I’d like to … what?”

“Nothing.”

“Go on.”

“Keep it. I thought you’d like to keep it.” She fiddles with her coat and rearranges her bag. “Anyway, I’m going now. Thanks for sorting it out.” He walks with her and stops alongside her when she comes to a halt at the school entrance. “I’m going home,” she says.

“Why?”

“Everyone’s laughing at me.”

“They’re not. They probably feel daft for jumping to conclusions.”

“I’m a
well scary
Bride of Frankenstein.”

He shakes his head and scuffs his shoe against the pavement. “Better than being a
real teenage
bride. You can’t just go home. What’ll your mum say? The photo’s
stupid
. People will forget about it, it’s not worth getting … Are you upset because I said I don’t want to keep it? Look, what happened this morning shows how lame it is to be going on about marriage all the time. Come on, we’ll be late.”

He lets his bag slide off his shoulder, unzips it, and drops his phone on top of something glossy, some kind of brochure—a university catalog.

Zippy bends and peels back the bag’s lip. “Manchester,” she says. “Not far away. Is that where you want to go? Do you think it’ll be easy to get a deferral? My dad couldn’t get one, he had to apply when he got back from his mission.” Adam’s reply is too long in coming. Another bus hisses past. A car stops on the yellow zigzags. He looks away and the cold air fluffs their breath into clouds that touch as they dissipate. Zippy aches. It feels as if her hopes are leaking from a small perforation between her lungs, and although
each escaping wish is small and ordinary—for Dad to think before he speaks, for Mum to get out of bed in the mornings, for Adam to serve a mission—the hurt as they trickle away is considerable. “You’re not going,” she says.

“No.”

“You’ll change your mind.”

“I won’t.”

“I’ll pray for you to make better choices.”

“Don’t.”

“People will think you’re unworthy, even if you’re not.”

“I know. But you can’t expect me to do it just to please a load of people I don’t care about.”

“I’m not
expecting
anything—”

“Zippy, you are.” He looks at her properly. “You’ve got Great Expectations.” He smiles and brushes her coat sleeve with his fingertips. “Great Expectations, get it?”

“I’m not expecting things for
me
, it’s—I want—it’s for
you
. Have you been doing something bad—apart from the kissing and stuff? Have you been looking at porn or reading anti-Mormon things on the Internet?”

“No.”

“Your dad will be so disappointed.”

“Don’t.”

“Will he let you live at home?”

“I hope so.”

“No one will want to marry you.”

“No one at church—so that’s about zero point three percent of the population.”

She just about manages to stop herself from saying, it’s more than a percentage point, it’s
me
. “But you’ll still come to church, won’t you?” she asks. “You can’t leave completely.”

“You’ve just done a good job of explaining why I can’t stay,” he says gently.

“Please stay.”

“I don’t believe.”

She doesn’t know what to do. If this was a story in a Church Lesson Manual, she’d give him the Temple picture card from his dad and he’d agree that missions are essential and there’s nothing lame about eternal marriage. But the card is sitting on her desk at home and if she tried to give it to him he’d almost certainly laugh and pass it back.

“Do you believe in eternal marriage?”

“Give it a rest, Zippy.”

“Either you do, or you don’t.”

“Not everything’s
either-or
. We’ve been friends for ages and we—we
like
each other. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t …”

She shakes her head, remembering President Carmichael’s horrible little saying:
“You like him; you love him; you let him; you lose him.”
She won’t lose him.

The school bell rings and Adam steps closer to the gate.

“You’d better go.”

She watches as he jogs away and then she walks to the bus stop by herself, wondering whether things might be easier if love wasn’t inextricably linked to marriage and she didn’t have to live every moment in the present
and
the endless future; it’s an unworthy thought—there’s nothing more important than marrying the right person, at the right time, in the right place. She’ll wait for him, hopefully not for as many years as Anne Elliot waited, but still, what’s a few years compared with forever? It’s just a small sacrifice; she’s only giving up something good for something better. It’s better to experience the agony now and save the hope for perpetuity, isn’t it?

Al stands on the pedals but the position magnifies the ache in his thigh, so he sits down and decides to take his time. He explores the new contours of his lip with his tongue and thinks about what’s just happened. The old men have gifted him a story: He’s discovered the password to a club that’s excluded him for years; he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to join, but he
could
. He could tell people, if he wanted. He pictures himself standing at the pulpit on Fast and Testimony Sunday, describing how the three Nephites came to his rescue. The room would go quiet, people would
really
listen, and they’d know he was someone important and good. That’s the whole point of miraculous stories, isn’t it? To let people know that Heavenly Father thought it was worth stopping whatever it was He was doing, in order to intervene in your life. Al could hang
everything
on this story—build his testimony on it, like the wise man who built his house upon the rock.

He pedals faster, even though the effort pumps pain into his thigh and shin and his breath rubs against the ache in his back. He sees other kids cycling on the opposite side of the road, cars and buses packed with uniformed bodies, all heading for school. Not him. He’s going to get the money out of his hoodie pocket, cycle to the bank, swap the notes, and take them straight to Mum. She’ll be stoked; she might even get up right away—it’ll be all religious like that bit in the New Testament when Jesus tells the man to take up his bed and walk. Once that’s happened, the whole story will be
totally epic. He imagines going into Issy’s room with the money in his hand and holding it out to Mum. He tries to think of some words to go with the action as he swings onto the pavement and over a pedestrian crossing in order to avoid a red light at the crossroads. The words come to him as he bumps back onto the road, and he tries them out.

“Mum,” he says in an authoritative voice that makes him sound quite a lot like Dad, “throw off your duvet and walk!”

He cycles past the end of Brother Rimmer’s road. He doesn’t feel the urge to turn around until he gets to the next junction, and he wouldn’t normally pay any attention to such an urge, but it’s been such a weird morning that he slips down a side road, turns, and heads back. He isn’t sure why. All he knows is Brother Rimmer will listen and join the dots together. No doubt most of what he says will be completely bonkers, but Al finds he doesn’t mind.

Brother Rimmer opens the door in his pajamas.

“You’re lucky, I’ve just stuck my teeth in,” he says. “What’s happened? Are you all right?”

“I wanted to tell you something.”

“You’d better come in, then.”

He follows Brother Rimmer down the hall, past the Blu-tacked pictures of the prophets, and into the kitchen. Brother Rimmer hefts a bag of peas out of the freezer and wraps it in an orange tea towel. “Hold that against your lip. Reckon you can manage a bacon sandwich?”

Al lifts the peas away to say, “Yes please.”

Brother Rimmer doesn’t put the bacon under the grill. He fries it in a frying pan with a big lump of butter. Then, when it’s ready, he dips bread in the fat, folds it around the bacon, and smacks his lips.

They eat standing up in the kitchen. Al takes small bites and chews with his back teeth. There isn’t a radiator, but Brother Rimmer’s got one of those electric heaters that blow like a hair dryer and Al stands with his back to it so his trousers can dry.

After they’ve finished eating, he tells Brother Rimmer about being attacked by the lads and rescued by the three old men; he doesn’t mention the money.

Brother Rimmer says the story is the best thing he’s heard in ages. He can’t be sure whether the men were the three Nephites, largely on account of the dog, which doesn’t feature in any of the reports he’s heard. However, it’s possible they may have decided to get a pet. After all, it must get a bit lonesome and boring, wandering the Earth until the Second Coming. Either way, he reckons it’s a sign that Heavenly Father is looking out for Alma Bradley—most likely a miracle, in fact. And because he says it so seriously and thoughtfully, Al can almost believe it; when it comes down to it, a miracle is just an unexpected but welcome change—water to wine, dead to alive, crap to brilliant.

On the way out, Al pauses next to a picture of Brigham Young, whose sour expression is partially obscured by a lawnlike beard.

“There’s something else I should tell you,” he says.

“Go on then, lad. Spit it out.”

“That money you’ve got in the garage.”

“Oh yes?” Brother Rimmer’s eyebrows flex.

“You should take it to the bank. It’s not safe. Anyone might steal it.”

“Not
anyone
, it turns out. You’re a good lad, Alma Bradley.” He holds the front door open as Al climbs back on his bike. “Go carefully now,” he calls. “Don’t do anything daft—you’ve had your miracle today!”

It’s quiet in the car. Dad doesn’t play the Tabernacle Choir CD and he doesn’t talk. When he pulls up outside the school, he switches off the engine and says, “I’ve learned something over the years, Jacob. The answer to some prayers is no.”

They walk up the path together. Jacob says goodbye and Dad says, “I’m tired,” which feels like, “I’m sorry,” even though the words are different.

He sits by himself in Early Drop-off Club. There’s no point in talking to anyone. Issy hasn’t come back, even though it’s All Souls’ Day.