The Taming of Lilah May (9 page)

Dad's obviously been thinking a bit more about the issue of me being untameable, because the next morning he announces that we are going to have a weekly Taming Lilah session, and that the issue is not up for discussion.

Great.

He books me in for a session after school tomorrow. God knows what he's going to do to me, but it's bound to be something he uses on the lions at Morley Zoo.

I hope he's not going to blow up my nose or throw me to the ground and leap on top of me.

Or shoot me.

Groo
.

So I'm moping around on my own in the playground, watching a bunch of kids trying to kill each other and the dark rain clouds gathering over the high red roof of my school and all the white sheets on the washing lines of the houses that back onto our school fluttering and flipping over in the wind, and then Adam Carter's there at my elbow, as if he was summoned by a magic lamp or something.

‘I'm busy,' I say.

Talk about stupid comments. But I don't want to talk to him right now.

‘No you're not,' he says in an even, calm way. He sits on the wall next to me. I get a whiff of his leather jacket and my heart flips in pain. ‘It's break-time.'

‘It's possible to be busy in your head, idiot,' I say.

That's true, in fact.

If I had an ‘engaged' red light, like you get on train toilets, on the outside of my head, I'd switch it on right now.

I've been thinking about Jay.

Not the Jay who started to change, but the one who used to play with me when we were younger.

It's like we were both these little paper men cut out of the same sheet or something.

His sense of humour was my sense of humour.

It was all so easy. We lived in this little world of our own making. Same toys, same games, same favourite foods, same words that made us splutter with laughter.

We'd spend hours recording tracks from the Top Forty and discussing them. Sometimes Jay
would let me have a go on his guitar. He placed his fingers over mine on the strings, and helped me strum enough chords to be able to play ‘Mull of Kintyre', an old song that always had us falling about in hysterics.

He smelled familiar. His room did too. Sweat and dirty plates and musty old copies of NME, his favourite music mag.

I can't go in his bedroom too often now. Most of the smell's gone, replaced by Mum's cleaning fluids and the smell of fabric conditioner. She's put the stack of NMEs inside the sliding yellow wardrobe, underneath his clothes.

When he went missing, Mum put his keys, wallet, passport, watch and iPod in a box, after the police had finished with them.

‘For when he comes back,' she said.

I don't look in the box. I don't touch his stuff. I don't often go into his room. I only polish the guitars from time to time but I can't bear to stay in there for more than a few minutes.

The silence in there is unbearable. It grows and threatens to eat me if I stay too long.

I miss our chats.

I thought I'd always have him there to talk to.

I always thought that I'd go right through life with my big brother there to support me.

That's what's supposed to happen.

Isn't it?

‘I'm sorry about the other night, Lilah,' says Adam, still in an even tone.

I glance sideways.

It's hard staying cross with him for long.

He smells so gorgeous. Looks pretty good, too. He's in uniform, of course, but the tie's done up loose like Pete Doherty or something, and his hair's been gelled up at the front. Even in uniform he still looks like a rock star.

‘It was my fault,' I say. ‘I guess I thought – oh crap, this is embarrassing – I guess I thought that maybe you wanted to be more than a friend. I can't believe I'm saying this.'

I feel my face going hot, so I twist my head in the other direction and pretend to watch the third years trying to play tennis in a stiff wind. Green Slazenger balls are spinning all over the place.

One of them comes towards me, so I trap it
underneath my shoe and make a great play of rolling it back and forth.

‘Oy!' shouts a small girl with frizzy black hair on the other side of the netting. ‘Can we have our ball back, if it's not TOO much trouble?'

Adam rescues it from underneath my foot and lobs it back at her.

Then he stands in front of me and glowers down at me with a very old look in his eyes.

‘I used to think about asking you out, yeah?' he says. ‘But over the last year you've got really angry, and it freaks me out.'

I nod, and stare down at my black leather T-bar shoes. We all have to wear revolting girly shoes at this school. I feel about six.

‘Sorry,' I say in a quiet voice.

‘It's OK,' says Adam. ‘I know why you're angry, of course. It's not your fault.'

I know he's right. But I can't stop the anger rising up. I can even feel bits of it now, even though he's made me feel small and sad and stupid.

It just won't go away.

The hideous day gets even worse. I'm just dragging my feet down the school corridor towards double Latin, and I see a nightmare vision coming towards me in the shape of my MOTHER in full clown costume and curly wig. She's clutching a set of yellow juggling balls and a selection of cricket bats and hoops.

‘Oh, hello, darling!' she says. ‘You'll never guess who's been asked to speak to the fourth years about careers in entertainment.'

‘No,' I say, darting looks up and down the corridor to make sure none of my class are watching. ‘I couldn't possibly guess.'

Mum scowls at my sarcasm, but then her face lights up again. Or at least, it tries to, underneath the big, sad, down-turned clown mouth that she's spent all morning painting on.

‘I'm stepping in at short notice,' she says. ‘They were supposed to be having a talk from the head of Film Studies at the local college, but he's got a cold, so the head rang me up instead.'

‘Great,' I say. ‘And now I must go, before I die of embarrassment.'

Oh,
groo.
Too late. Here's Amelie Warner and her bunch of witch-mates all giggling and shoving past us like a big, wriggling monster with six heads.

I'd been feeling kind of guilty about shoving Amelie off her chair and I'd been rehearsing a grudging apology in my head, but when I see her horrible blonde curls bouncing around her pointy chin, and her eyes all lit up with spite, I feel a new surge of anger take hold of me.

‘Just ignore them,' says Mum. ‘They're jealous. Their parents probably wear grey suits and work as accountants.'

Sounds like bliss to me. I allow myself a big huffy sigh at this untouchable vision of normality. A vision I can only dream of.

Then I watch my mother the clown open the door into the classroom next to us, and listen to the children erupt in stunned laughter as she begins to flip the yellow balls in the air and shout out of her big, painted red mouth.

Is this hideous day ever going to end?

Adam walks me home after school.

‘So I guess we can stay mates, right?' I say in a nervous voice.

I'm trying hard not to upset him or be angry.

‘For now,' says Adam. ‘See how things go, yeah?'

That's kind of fair, so I stick out my hand in a businesslike way and he gives a snort of laughter and then shakes it.

‘Seriously, though, Lilah,' he says. ‘Have you ever thought of seeing somebody?'

‘What – you mean a date?' I say, confused.

Adam sighs.

‘I mean about your anger,' he says. ‘There must be people who can help you.'

It's my turn to sigh. In the weeks and months after Jay disappeared a whole army of do-gooding counsellors and therapists descended on our little house after my mum got it in her head that I was having some sort of breakdown, and despite their best efforts to make me talk and ‘let it all out', I refused to speak to any of them.

‘No good,' I say. ‘Been there, bought the T-shirt, worn the T-shirt, ripped it off and sent it to Oxfam.'

Adam gives another snort.

‘You're mental, May,' he says. ‘But I think that's why I like you.'

I smile, but I'm thinking about what he said about getting help.

The thing is, I know that there's only one
thing that will help me stop being angry.

And that one thing just never seems to happen.

I need Jay to come home.

But even if he did . . . would he ever forgive me?