Being Me (22 page)

I rest my arm on her back. ‘Yeh, they fuck us up, our mums and dads.’

There’s a crowd around us, gawping. ‘What the fuck are yous looking at?’ I shout. They slink away.

I think me and Mikaela are friends again. We walk back to class together, arm in arm. Everything is so confusing. I’m thinking,
is my dad really living with her mum now?

It’s morning. I text Marcus.

U deh

Yup

Can I fone u

Sure

I phone him.

‘What’s up?’

‘I had this dream last night, I was going to the corner shop and I had to cross a patch of forest to get there and all these bodies were sleeping rough under blankets under the trees. They turned and looked right at me and every face was the same, a girl with a tear tattooed below her eye. In the trees above each one of her was a pair of football boots, dangling.’

‘Did you recognise her?’

‘No. She just stared and stared. Her face was a moon. There was a smashed bottle in the grass on the ground in front of me. I was in bare feet, running like a wolf, treading really carefully. My foot was right over the bottle.’

‘And?’

‘As my foot goes down, instead of getting cut, the ground underneath me disappears and it’s like I’ve stepped off a cliff, I’m falling through the air. I’m screaming, petrified. Then I woke up.’

‘Oh.’

It’s weird on the phone, I can’t see Marcus’s face. I don’t know what he’s feeling.

‘What does it mean then, the dream?’ I ask him.

He makes some thinking noises on the phone, sucking his teeth, blowing air through his lips.

‘Well?’

‘Nothing’ he says. ‘Some dreams are just a big pile of nonsense. Come round. I haven’t seen you in ages.’

Thinking Marcus would be useless as a clairvoyant, I pull on some jeans and a top and get a taxi to meet him on the bit of tarmac in the park near his house. When I get there, he’s waiting for me.

‘You OK?’

He takes my hand in his. His favourite football is under his arm. I feel better seeing him, it makes the dream seem, like he says, nonsense. We kick the ball around a bit then I sit on the low wall that surrounds the tarmac and he practices tricks. Afterwards, he comes up and stands in front of me, nudges his hips between my knees so he can get close and places his arms around me. I rest my head on the top of his head and gaze out across the park. A dog has stopped on the tarmac in front of us. It looks up at me, puzzled.

During one of her sigh sessions with me, Mum said she used to be a champion ice skater. So I hold her to it. She wriggles and squirms but it’s no use and this Saturday afternoon we set off for the ice rink. Mum’s nervous (“after all these years” etc). I haven’t told her, but I’ve recruited some help to get her around.

Me and Mum get to the rink, check in our shoes and start loosening the laces on the skating boots we’ve hired. Mum keeps looking around. ‘It’s much smaller than I imagined,’ she says.

‘What age were you when you were a champion skater, Mum?’

‘About eight,’ Mum goes, then, ‘when I say champion skater what I meant was I got a Certificate for getting round without falling over.’

I groan. I know now she’s going to be as bad as me, if not worse. Luckily, my helper shows up. Mikaela. I’m thinking we can be on each side of my mum to push her round and help her up when she falls.

‘Is this who I think it is?’ says Mum as Mikaela comes up to us.

‘It’s Mikaela.’

‘Whose mother is...’

‘It’s not Mikaela’s fault, it’s you adults who messed things up. She’s my friend. Now don’t kick off, Mum.’

I run up and grab Mikaela before Mum can give her the evil eye and turn her away. We high five. I take her hand and pull her with me to close the gap with my mum.

Mikaela shakes Mum’s hand politely. I know Mikaela’s been banned from seeing me in case we go shoplifting, so this is a big deal for her.

There’s an awkward silence.

‘Well, girls, let’s get these boots on and skate,’ says Mum.

The ice rink is a large circle of ice with benches around it going up about five rows. There’s a cafe pumping out greasy fumes and cheesy tunes and polystyrene cups, there’s a shop selling tat, there’s stinking toilets and there’s a PA system that blares – ‘please can all skaters circulate in an anti-clockwise direction’ every ten seconds, an instruction which none of the about hundred skaters or so – most of them kids who wouldn’t know anti-clockwise from a slap in the face – pay any attention to.

‘It’s freezing,’ I say.

‘It
is
an ice rink,’ Mikaela replies.

I give her my unimpressed look.

‘Just sayin.’

Me and Mikaela tie each other’s laces. We’re all strapped up and ready. Mum is on the phone for a bit, but finally gets off it. Mikaela volunteers to go first. She clutches her way along the side-boards to the rink entrance, puts a foot though the opening and onto the ice, then another foot. All her weight is on her arms which are clinging to the skirt boards. She gets herself upright, shifting her weight to her feet, gets herself steady, pushes off a tiny amount and promptly falls onto her bum. ‘Yaaah!’ she shouts. She scrambles up, chopping ice with her boots as she does, and clings to the skirt boards. She waves me to get on the ice too.

I get one foot on the ice and wobble a bit, get the other foot down and push myself off. I stay low with my feet wide to balance and my bum out to make sure I don’t shoot forward too fast. I get a metre along the ice like this then someone zooming along at sixty miles an hour knocks into me and I fall down in a scream. Mikaela staggers over to me, reaches out a hand and tries to haul me up but the ice is too slippery and she only falls on top of me instead. Even Mum laughs.

‘Your turn!’ we call to Mum from our heap on the ice.

Mum crosses herself, then steps onto the ice.

And glides.

And glides.

And glides.

‘Oh my God,’ I say to Mikaela, ‘my mum’s like a swan!’

Mikaela gawps. ‘That’s your mum. Wowser. She can skate!’

We hold onto the boards and try to keep my mum in sight. She’s bobbing and weaving between slower people, her hands behind her back, her body bent forward, her face all happy.

‘Aagh!’ I scream. She does a sudden twist and now she’s actually skating backwards and waving at us at the same time.

‘For real?’ asks Mikaela, getting her phone out and taking a pic. We look but there’s nothing but a blur. Mum’s too fast even for Mikaela’s phone.

After a bit more showboating, Mum pulls up alongside us.

‘Mum! Mum! Mum! You have to teach us!’

‘I don’t know. I mean, I just skate. It all just came back.’

As Mum talks, me and Mikaela latch onto an arm of her each and, slipping and sliding, we get her to haul us around the rink. We move across the ice like a six-legged, three-headed centipede. Everyone overtakes us – tiny tots, old couples and smooth skaters, but we don’t care.

We’re all bundled together in a big ice ball after yet another tumble when suddenly Mikaela fishes out her phone and stares at it, worried. ‘I’ve got to go,’ she says.

‘But we’re having so much fun,’ I protest.

‘You sure?’ my mum asks, disappointed.

‘I liked ice skating with you, Mrs Vialli, but I need to get back.’

I can see the panic in Mikaela’s eyes. I help her take off her skates on the benches. ‘My dad’s come back early and wants to know where I am,’ Mikaela says. ‘I just hope I switched off my phone’s location thingy fast enough. I told him I was in the library.’

We hug and she runs off.

‘What spooked her?’ Mum asks.

‘She thinks she left the bath running,’ I lie.

Mum looks at me. She knows I’ve lied but she lets it slide. ‘Come on, then,’ she says, instead, ‘Lesson one. How to push off.’

Mum shows me how to glide on one foot then switch to the other, and how you are meant to extend the amount of time between switching feet as you get better at it. With all my football skills, it doesn’t take me too long to pick up the basic technique – after five falls I can actually glide twenty metres without ending on my bum.

The ice rink loudspeaker announces the rink is closing in ten minutes. We scoff some fish and chips from the cafe then jump in the car. As Mum pulls out of the ice rink car park, I text Marcus:

Can u skate

Wot u mean

Bin ice skatin w mum. Hopeless (me) can u

Im the best. Tho i neva tried it yet lol

Lol x

X

A Note From Mum

Mum’s started leaving these random notes. They make me feel good but I’m not sure what to make of them. I check with MTB and he says he’s getting the notes as well. We decide Mum is doing some kind of therapy.

The Final is coming up fast and this is our last Practice session. We’re one player short of a team which Miss Fridge says is perfect for sharpening us up by playing five a side. She has us doing zonal defence, pass and move, and long shooting.

After a liquids break, we do weaving through cones, jumping headers and tackling. We work hard. By the end, we’re all dripping wet and dropping. Miss Fridge gees us up for five more minutes of long passing then relents. She calls us to sit round her so we can discuss tactics for the Final. The weather forecast is sopping wet so she wants long studs, tight marking and long range shooting. As she’s explaining, Mikaela calls out.

‘What’s that scar, Miss?’

Miss Fridge is wearing shorts and there’s a long, old scar running all the way up her left thigh into her shorts.

‘I was knocked off my bike by a car. Didn’t see me. Broke my leg, my hips. They told me “Julie, you’ll never walk again.”’

‘That’s your name, Miss – Julie?’ Mikaela says.

‘Yes.’

‘Did it hurt?’ asks someone else.

‘It hurt a lot. Not the pain, though that was hard. I was a champion footballer and that car ended my dream.’

‘But you move OK, Miss. You don’t limp or anything.’

‘I can’t run though for more than ten seconds, then my hips hurt like hell. And I can’t have children. So you’re my children. And you’re my football.’

‘You were good?’

‘Yes.’

‘Show us your skills!’ everyone shouts.

Miss takes up the challenge. ‘Give me the ball, girls!’

Someone rolls her the ball. Miss flicks it up, catching it in the crook of her neck. She lets it drop to the crook of her knee then flicks it back up again, high. While it’s in the air, she drops to the ground and sits down. Then, when the ball drops, she immediately ping pongs it between her left and right feet. She does scissors switches. Then she rolls onto her front and keeps the ball up with the flat of her trainers. I’ve never seen anyone do that last trick before. She’s better even than Marcus.

Everyone starts clapping.

Miss catches the ball in her hands. ‘That’s it girls, my hips can’t take any more. Do your best tomorrow. Do me proud.’

Miss lets us take an extra-long blast in the showers. We all walk off the school grounds, buzzing. Then me and Mikaela are at the bus stop together.

‘“Julie”? I always had her down as a Susannah or something,’ Mikaela says.

‘Me too!’

I catch Mikaela sighing. ‘How’s it going at home?’ I ask.

‘Dad’s put a lock on their bedroom door.’

‘What! He’s locked your mum in?’

‘No, out. Of their bedroom.’

‘So your mum’s back?’

Mikaela nods. ‘But it’s ridiculous now. One tells me something like, “ask your mother where’s the oven glove?” then I have to ask my mum, and take the answer back.’

‘At least they’re together.’

‘If that’s what you call it.’

I squeeze her hand. ‘Stay strong.’ I say. It’s what she always says to me.

She sniffs. ‘How’s your boyfriend?’

‘Marcus is OK.’

‘It’s not fair. You’ve got a boyfriend and a brother, I’ve got nobody!’

‘You’ve got me.’

Suddenly Mikaela’s squeezing me like she’s never going to let go.

When her bus comes, she gets on it and I wave to her. She hardly waves back, she’s so preoccupied.

Later, she texts me.

hws yr mum?

OK

Yr dad shwd up?

no

Sry

sok. nt yr folt

my parents doin counslin. i think theyl split agen. stil gna get dat mnth in Jmca tho. They owe me