How the Light Gets In (10 page)

Bridget comes into my room and sits on the end of my bed with a towel wrapped around her head, the skin on her face tight and dry from too much soap and water. ‘How are you?’ she asks.

‘Fine,’ I say.

I notice for the first time that Bridget has a wart on her right knee, a small one, but still a wart. I think about the question on my passport application form, which asked whether I had any distinguishing marks. I didn’t, but felt a strong
impulse to write that I have a blue wart on the back of my right knee.

‘Look,’ says Bridget. ‘Just don’t worry about James. You take him too seriously and you shouldn’t. He lives inside some stupid comic strip.’

She is pleased with the adultness of her tone. Only fourteen and she is giving a sixteen-year-old advice about her older brother.

My sternum aches. ‘Have Margaret and Henry told you what I said to them?’

Bridget pulls the tail of the towel around to the front of her shoulder as though it were a veil.

‘They said you are upset about James being a bit of a pain.’

‘Were they angry?’ I ask.

‘They just want you to get along with him, that’s all.’

‘I want to get along too,’ I say, as though everything were simple.

She squeezes my foot just like her mother does to her, and just like James does to his mother. I want to talk more, I want more information, but she gets up to leave.

‘Just don’t take the bait,’ she says. ‘You
always
take the bait.’

‘Thanks.’

She stops in the doorway. ‘Have you been smoking in here?’

I haven’t brushed my teeth.

‘No,’ I say, quite incredulous.

‘It smells a bit like smoke in here. Anyway, see you later.’

At breakfast Henry and Margaret sit at opposite ends of the table, as usual, and seem calm, cheerful. The difference is that they don’t pass me anything. There’s usually a lot of ‘Have some more eggs, Lou’ or ‘Would you like some orange juice?’ and ‘What a beautiful day’.

Perhaps the only difference is that Henry doesn’t look at James. But then I wonder if Henry ever
did
look at James.
I might assume he did because there’s usually an awful lot of eye contact going on in this family. A lot more than I think I could ever get used to.

James scoffs his food, but just as he is about to leave the room he turns to face me.

‘Hey, Lou, I was wondering if you want to see a movie tonight. I’m being picked up at six o’clock, if you’re interested.’

At least at the movies there’s always the darkness and always the chance it will be good and even if the film’s bad you can pretty much not exist for two hours and not feel too gloomy, unless the film is so bad that you are forced to walk out.

‘That’d be great,’ I say.

James smiles and I smile back.

Henry stands.

‘Everything’s okay?’ he says, not quite a question and not quite a statement.

‘Everything’s great,’ I say, but Margaret says nothing and I know it isn’t great.

In the car on the way to the movies, James makes a point of telling his friends (one of whom is Isabella) that I can play chess better than Todd (whoever Todd is) and that I can get most crosswords out in less than ten minutes.

‘Shit,’ says just about everybody. ‘You must be pretty smart.’

James makes the moment brighter by not leaving me to have to answer this myself.

‘Sure is,’ he says. ‘Lou makes my sister look like one of the seven dwarfs.’

James and I sit next to each other in the cinema and even though I am mostly repulsed by him, in the dark it is simply as though I am sitting next to a friend, which isn’t something I even know a great deal about but that’s what it feels like, and
I wonder if we might be able to sort each other out.

The movie isn’t especially sad but right at the end when a couple who are maybe somewhere in their thirties are behaving happily together, my eyes get hot and I think that it would be pleasant to cry. I reach out for James’ hand and hold it. We stay still like this and when the movie ends I let go and we walk out side by side and even in the bright lights of the foyer I am not afraid to see him.

It’s my first day in high school. Margaret drops us at the front gates on her way to work. Today she looks like an air hostess, ready to serve passengers in first class; a pristine white scarf around her throat and a gold brooch on her navy-blue lapel.

‘Good luck, Lou,’ she says. ‘And don’t forget to introduce yourself to the principal.’

‘I won’t,’ I say. ‘Thanks for the lift.’

James walks on ahead then turns to say, ‘You don’t have to say
thanks
for everything, you know. It’s not like she gave you her
kidney
or anything.’

Bridget sighs. ‘
Whatever
,’ she says, and we walk together in silence through the gates.

The building is large and square, dirty white, and surrounded by a wire fence; like a former gulag with an empty, well-mown lawn in front and a limp American flag hanging from a pole near the enormous front doors.

We are early and there are only a dozen or so students hanging around the front steps in their brand new clothes. Some of them are brandishing their first set of car keys, eyeing off their new cars which are parked beyond the fence, clean and shiny in the distance.

The corridors are wide and long and lined with metal lockers and dozens of red, blue and white doors, all snapped shut and freshly painted. The building is hushed, still
emerging from hibernation, stale and sleeping; lights out, eyes shut, stuffed full of things that happened last year, scarred by the scuff marks, graffiti and smells of those who have moved on.

We see James rushing on ahead, turning a corner, almost running.

Bridget says, ‘Well, this is me.’ She opens a locker, puts her bag inside and takes out a notepad and some pens. ‘I’ll take you to your locker and then show you where your first class is. Mom collected your locker key last week.’

I take the key. ‘Thanks.’

Taped to the inside of her locker is a photograph, a portrait, cut into a heart shape, of a red-haired boy; rufous and sleek, like a certain kind of fox. ‘Who’s that?’ I ask.

‘Nobody,’ she says and slams the metal door.

My locker is in the basement; a dark, hollow, subterranean place without windows, away from classrooms. This suits me fine. It’s cooler down here and there is a bathroom nearby, but the smell is dreadful: a mixture of eggs and donuts, coming from the basement’s cavernous, over-lit cafeteria.

‘Show me your program,’ says Bridget. I take the crumpled sheet out of my backpack and she grabs at it.

‘American History,’ she says. ‘Let’s go.’

I haven’t finished unloading my bag when she starts up the wide stairs, two steps at a time. I close my locker and follow.

I stare at her. The cartilages at the back of her fine brown knees splay like miniature cathedral buttresses. I stare at the clean white edges of her short skirt. She doesn’t look back to see if I’m following.

The corridors begin to fill with students. Bridget greets her many friends along the way, dozens of them. She stops to talk to a few, mostly quick conversations about who’s got a new car and who’s dumped whom over summer. All of the people she
stops to speak to are handsome or pretty. She introduces me to no one and no one asks her to.

I had been ready to swallow my nerves, had rehearsed some clever things to say, had expected to be the centre of considerable and awkward attention, but Bridget’s friends barely look at me. I wonder what it would be like to be one of them: tanned, healthy and brave.

She takes me into a small classroom crammed with graffiti-scarred desks and tells me to pick one, ‘You better choose one you like now,’ she says, ‘you’ll be stuck with it all year.’ Her tone is censorious.

‘Thanks, boss,’ I say, trying to assert myself. ‘It’s hardly a big deal.’

There is nobody else in the room and it smells of suffocated paint.

‘Whatever,’ she says. ‘I’ll leave you alone now.’ As though I should want it that way.

‘Thanks,’ I say.

I sit next to the farthest wall under a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. His skin is dark and sagging under black eyes and he has thick dark sideburns which look as though they have been glued on, like an ape from
Planet of the Apes
.

The bell rings, but no one appears, not even the teacher. It’s ten past nine. I take out my new notebook and a red pen.

In primary school I was good at ruling up the pages in fresh exercise books. I liked to write my name and classroom number neatly in the box provided, open the front cover and press it down, take out my new ruler and favourite red ballpoint pen and begin to rule every page in the book.

I performed this painstaking task with immense pleasure. What a tremendous feeling to be at the start of a clean and promising new exercise book. Perfect ruling, and lots of straight neat lines signified that I would never make another
mistake. But if the ruling went wrong, I would fly into a rage of self-disgust. I’d tear out the page and then, disappointed with the torn edges left behind – this crinkly proof of failure – I’d tear out the corresponding page to even things out.

A few crooked lines later and I had torn out every page until there was no exercise book left. I did this countless times, in every school year, and hid the piles of waste paper in my cupboard. To support this habit, I stole dozens of fresh red and white exercise books from the local newsagent.

The room is still empty. Although I know something is wrong I sit and wait, inert and stubborn, feeling lonely. I pinch my thigh hard so that it hurts. I talk to myself.
This is
another fresh start and I’m going to get it all perfect. No more blushing. Act
really confident. Say lots of funny things. Look at people when you speak to
them. Answer lots of questions. Meet the smartest people in the class
.

I hear singing: the American national anthem. I leave the classroom and wander the corridors but by the time I find the assembly hall I am red and the back of my neck is crawling with perspiration. The singing ends and a row of students move onto the stage where they are presented with awards.

Somebody says, ‘God bless this year’s seniors’ and there’s a speech by last year’s prom queen about senior year being the most significant year in a student’s life. She must have taken the day off from her new job as the receptionist at the local mega dental clinic. Behind her, as she speaks, her yearbook photograph is displayed, a Vaseline haze around the edges as though she is a movie star.

I go to the bathroom near my locker, sit on the cold cubicle floor and wrap my arms around my legs. Will it be the same now? One crooked line and I turf the whole thing out?
No
, I say,
it won’t be the same
. I stand up and go back outside, desperate for friendship and complete change.

The basement dwellers are at their lockers, talking and
laughing. I look around. At a locker near mine there’s a pretty girl with long black hair and a broken and blackened front tooth. I like that she has this flaw in an otherwise dolly-perfect face. I stare at her and she says, ‘Hi’ and I say ‘Hi’ and then she walks briskly away, leaving for her first class which also happens to be the same as mine: American History.

All the desks in the classroom are taken, but one. A tall boy, good looking and blond, is sitting at the desk I chose earlier and I realise with a swoop in my stomach that I have left my notebook behind. He is flicking through it, as though trying to decide whether it’s worth pawning.

I take a deep breath and walk over to him, my heart kicking. I hope he’ll notice my accent. I hope he’ll want to talk to me.

‘Hello,’ I say. ‘I think I left my notebook on this desk.’

He looks up at me, slowly, calmly, and I wonder what it would be like to move so smoothly, instead of like a scared field mouse.

‘Did you?’ he asks, already in possession of the answer. ‘Does it have your name in it?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say.

He tucks my notebook under his history textbook. I realise we are being watched by a corner full of girls, their long blow-dried hair stiff with spray.
Vainglorious pig
, I think.
Probably
a
footballer
.

I begin to blush as he speaks. ‘How do I know it’s yours then?’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ I say.

He laughs, ‘No worries, mate.’ The stiff-haired girls laugh with him.

I take the desk near the door and watch the other students. They are almost manic with enthusiasm for this first day, hugging and saying ‘Hi’ to each other and catching up on their summer holidays. A boy and girl in the corner hold hands
between their desks and do not speak nor move their faces into any kind of expression.

She is fat and so is he, like two people destined to become identical. They stare to the front, lost in the summery and secret world of their romance, smug yet terrified; their fingers gripping as though to say to each other –
don’t let go of me or this is
what you’ll face again
.

The vainglorious pig-boy looks across at me and runs his fingers through his perfectly coiffed hair; hair like a golden field of something breakfast cereal is made of. The three girls stare at him from across the room like low-IQ witches.

The teacher – three-quarters bald and skinny – walks in, stands for a moment and starts the lesson by taking off his glasses and unbuttoning his jacket and putting them both, slowly, carefully, on the table.

‘That’s my cue for starting class,’ he says. ‘I hope you can remember it.’ Everybody falls silent.

My neck tightens. I have nothing to write in, or with, and my desk is empty.

‘For those of you who don’t already know … and God forbid, I’ve been around long enough …’ says the teacher, pacing behind his desk, wearied and wrathful like a zoo animal, ‘my name’s Mr Caldwell and I’ve been taking this class for seven years.’

Then, as though having a private joke, he snickers, and scratches an itch at the top of his left thigh.

After writing some notes on the board, Mr Caldwell acknowledges me with a perfunctory smile, then, as though I’ve given him a brilliant idea for a novel form of cruelty, says to the class, ‘I know what I’m in the mood for. I’m in the mood for a quiz. We have some new people and I want to know who, and what, I’m dealing with.’

I don’t like him. He has a jagged black hairline near the
front of his skull that makes him look like a shiny egg cracked open by a small and furious hatchling.

The topic of the quiz is the American Civil War. The questions are about Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee and thinning Confederate lines at Petersberg and the ruins of Richmond, and John Wilkes Booth. I know all the answers. There isn’t a single one I don’t know.

I rehearse the answers in my head and prepare my voice by clearing my throat, but when the time comes to put my hand up, my face reddens and my stomach collapses. My heart pounds so hard it fills my chest and there’s no room to breathe.

And so, like the intellectually effete girls with long sticky hair and pink lipstick, I remain mute. The clever ones, including the vainglorious pig-boy, not only answer the questions, but offer elaborate embellishments; the exact numbers of remaining soldiers in the Union and Confederate armies at the time of Lee’s surrender.

By the end of the day I feel exhausted by my shame and I want to get home, lie on my bed, write a few pages of new pacts and promises, take a bath then sleep for ten hours.

Margaret has left work early and prepared a special ‘back-to-school’ dinner. We eat it at the dining-room table, where linen napkins, crystal glasses and the best silver are all laid out as in a museum exhibition. James is late and the boy who has driven him home comes inside to say hello.

‘You’re late,’ says Margaret.

‘Sorry,’ says James. ‘It’s just that we all went for a Coke …’

I’m sick of hearing about Coke. Henry stands. ‘Is your friend staying for dinner?’

James’ friend walks up to the table and stares at me.

‘I wouldn’t want to put you out,’ he says. He has the greenest eyes I have ever seen. They can’t be real. He is tall and dressed in a loose woollen jumper even though it’s a warm afternoon.

‘Sit down,’ says Margaret, no longer angry with James, but curious, wondering, as we all are, how it is that James has made a new friend, and an older friend, so quickly, on his first day back at school.

‘Hadn’t you better introduce your friend?’ asks Henry, still standing, wondering whether or not he should go to the kitchen to fetch more food. He is as bewildered as I have ever seen him.

I am obviously not the only one unsettled by this boy’s preposterous good looks. It is impossible to look at him and not feel your limbs fill with shivering.

‘Oh,’ says James, ‘this is Tom. He’s just moved here. But he’s Scottish, originally.’

‘Well,’ says Tom, looking at me again, ‘I’m
still
Scottish.’

Tom stands with his arms by his sides. Like Margaret, he doesn’t need to lean on something to occupy a room, doesn’t need to fold his arms, or fidget, or gesture gratuitously to fill the space around him.

‘Nice to meet you,’ says Margaret, who stands to shake his hand, so charmed that her entire manner is altered. Instead of her usual ease, she rubs her fingers across her neck and as soon as she sits down again, drinks half a glass of cold water and leaves her lips wetted.

Tom is a senior, and so, like me, this will be his last year of high school.

Henry returns with an extra plate and serves Tom’s food while Tom explains that he spent most of last year in Europe with his mother after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

‘It started in her breast,’ he says, like a young doctor, almost comfortable with the word
breast
and yet aware of its
impact and meaning. He stares at me and continues, ‘And then it spread greedily to several of her internal organs.’

I cannot eat.

‘Oh, how awful,’ says Margaret, behaving as though there is a camera in the room, self-conscious, her chin held high. Perhaps this is always the effect of the presence of somebody extravagantly beautiful.

Tom hasn’t begun to eat. Bridget is beside me, playing with her food on the end of a heavy silver fork. James is silent, busy wolfing his food as though nothing has happened or is about to happen.