English schoolboy Miles Johnson struggles to cope with the loss of his best friend, Danny. While he mourns and is away from school, he spends time with his godparents, Maggie and Nelson, who try to comfort him. As events unravel, he gradually learns how to cope with grief and suffering in a world where things go wrong.
Danny died on 25th October 2005. I jotted it down in my diary. I found him floating on the stream, completely submerged except for his back. His school uniform was neatly folded and piled on the bank. I paced down the slope into the water, treading then swimming. dragging Danny up steadily. I laid him on a bed of grass by the waterside. My hands pressed on his chest, then his wrists, brushing his face to see if his eyes would flicker. Nothing. The skin was white, cold to touch, wet all over. I took off my blazer and gave him some decency. The willow tree nearby had broken branches dangling above where the body lay, and the shade darkened the water. Had I not been there, no one would have known. It would have been too difficult to spot him there, gently sinking. Poor Danny. Now his body was soiled and looked disgusting. We were alone in this part of the forest, right where the thickets were most dense. I was calm, oddly, and quiet. I stayed there with Danny for some time, kneeling by his side. I went back to school at around quarter past three. My teachers had been looking for me since two o’clock when I wandered into the woods for some fresh air. I told them what I saw. They left me alone when they realised it was too soon to ask too many questions. I was not expected to come back until somehow, naturally, I felt like it.
Sometimes we would sneak off into the forest by ourselves at lunchtime. The school gates were open for us to go home for an hour. We didn’t. We had always preferred skipping lunch and going into the woods. It was very close by, down the hillside and across the fence at the bottom of the slope. If it had rained the day before, the ground would be sludgy, and our trousers, too. A narrow path led us to the stream. We would do some tree climbing by the waterside, up those big oaks that must have sat there for centuries. Danny was a quick climber. He would get up to the top and tell me how far he could see. The school, the church spire, my house. Mr. Doyle would come peering through the bushes at around quarter past two, complaining about how much time was wasted and how disappointed he was. We often lost track of time. The peace and quiet of the forest had a way of making us forget where we were. Up the hill we went, heads down, secretly savouring the memory of our lunchtime mischief before going back to school.
After the last period, Danny and I would take our bikes and ride onto Downs Lane, through the forest towards the village. Brown mounds of leaves cluttered the sides of roads, forcing us to swerve around bends. The days were shortening and the tall oaks let in little light except for a dull grey-orange. We tried to get home before dinner. If we were fast, we could afford a quick stop at the Smiths’ video shop. Many hours were spent browsing through movies my parents would never dream of buying. We watched The Shining together once. In secret, of course. Danny couldn’t stop wetting his bed for an entire week. He had a recurring dream where Jack Torrance would break his bedroom door with a sledgehammer.
On the day I found Danny, I went straight from school to Maggie’s house, up the steep drive onto the farmhouse outside the village. The house hid behind a fence of tall birches on a small depression, sitting on the edge of a field. I told her what happened and we sat for a long time in the living room, gazing at the pictures Nelson had hung on the wall to distract ourselves.
‘That one’s my favourite, the one with the sunflowers.’ She pointed, missing the picture by a good few inches. ‘Nelson spent all summer working on that. He said it looks better than the Van Gogh. That one, to the side, is a picture of our granddaughter. Nelson hasn’t seen her for many years, so he had to imagine what she would look like now. She must be twelve this year. Goodness, time flies.’
Maggie let out a sudden chuckle, shaking her mug and spilling drops of tea on her armchair.
Nelson was not someone who would usually showcase his paintings. He was a man of very few words who preferred to spend more time working than with his wife. But Maggie didn’t seem to mind. Ever since they retired, their lives have been quiet. Maggie was spending most of her days at church and in her garden, nursing her flowers.
Nelson sat with me on the sofa, staring into the telly. Countdown was on. Nelson wasn’t really paying attention. You could tell his mind was off somewhere else, dreaming about new landscapes and people to paint. He liked portraits. They had a certain intimacy about them which Nelson found very attractive. When you have a picture of someone on your wall, he used to say, it’s like seeing them in person, like they’re in the room with you. I suppose that would be true if the painting was realistic. Nelson’s work tended to be more surreal. They always had a blurred and disfigured feel about them. Small heads on big bodies, or big hands with tiny feet. He didn’t care for proportion. To him, it’s the feeling of freedom that gives him the highs when he’s painting. No rules, just art.
‘When you’re an adult, you’ll understand. Sometimes people don’t say what they think. Your parents, I trust that they care. Maybe they’re just not showing it. It’s hard to say things with words, you know.’ He lit his cigarette and took several long, slow puffs, and he coughed. His asthma made him sensitive to smoke but he didn’t listen to the doctors. Live every day by itself, he always said. ‘Do they even know you’re here?’
One of the contestants formed an eight-letter word from the jumbled letters. Fugitive. F-U-G-I-T-I-V-E. The hostess gave a plastic smile as the contestant gazed into the audience behind the cameras, looking overly smug at his tiny achievement.
‘No. They don’t.’
Nelson frowned. ‘You’ve got to remember, Miles.’ He tapped two fingers to his temple gently. ‘You’ve got to remember they are trying, and that they are trying very hard. For you, they’re trying for you.’
Dad often tried to be serious. He was careful to emphasise time and time again that I am his son and he is happy to be my father. This would usually be followed by a few patronising pats on the back. I struggled to keep eye contact with him. He tried to smile, but his face never quite mustered a full expression of happiness.
‘I am supposed to take care of you.’ He would say, matter-of-factly. ‘Normal people have children who come home after school. They make sure that they let their parents know where they are. So why can’t you do something so simple, Miles? I just don’t understand.’
I did not love Michael or Jane Johnson. They fed me and clothed me, and I am grateful, but love is not something you exchange for material things. ‘Thank you’ is different from ‘I love you’. My godparents were different. At least they cared to ask about how I was and meant it.
Most of the time I had away from school was spent with Maggie, listening to stories about her many children and how they’re never in touch anymore. I saw less and less of Nelson as the weeks went by. Maggie said he had a big project to work on, a large portrait. Occasionally he would peer his head into the living room, grinning, proudly stating the progress of that day’s work. As much as he knew my parents were concerned, he didn’t mind me being at the farmhouse. No, not really. In fact, I liked to think he rather enjoyed my company. His smiles said it all.
Ruby moved in with Maggie and Nelson on 25th November 2005. She came with her mum, carrying two plump bags which were soaking wet from the rain. I happened to be there that afternoon when they arrived. Apparently, they had lost their way from the bus stop in the village. Maggie said they were relatives, here to stay for a while. A week, perhaps, maybe more.
We spent a good ten minutes staring at the television screen. Countdown was on. Two hundred to two-fifteen, neck and neck. Neither contestants cracked the numbers round, much to the delight of the hostess who quickly provided the answer.
‘Are you ill? Is that why you’re here?’ She asked.
‘Yeah. I guess you could say so.’
I had spent the last month thinking about going back to school. Nelson had been growing impatient but Maggie stopped him from driving me back. Danny had not been gone for long. It was too soon, Maggie said, it was better to keep me under watchful eyes. That’s why she wanted to keep me in their house, to keep me safe, to make sure I was well. Michael and Jane were in London during the daytime and no one would have known what I was up to. So the farmhouse became day-care, in a weird way.
‘Your name, it’s kind of weird.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Miles. That’s a measurement, isn’t it? Like the distance?’
‘Miles. As in Miles Davis, the guy that plays the trumpet.’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘You wouldn’t. Not many people know about him. My parents, they like jazz. They have a record player and they play jazz every now and then.’
‘That sounds nice.’
‘No, not really.’
The Jenga tower fell over. Miles: two, Ruby: nil. She quickly reassembled the bricks, ready for another round.
I found Ruby to be poor company most of the time. I would come round on my bike at around nine in the morning, and she would be playing Jenga in the living room by herself or picking Maggie’s books off the bookshelf. Not that she was interested in reading. She was just flicking through the pictures, especially the recipe books. There were photos of whole roast birds, fruit pies, soup, all family-sized. By the late afternoon after lunch, she would be interested in talking. London was a big place, she said, much bigger than the village here in Darting. It was far away, too. Besides Maggie and Nelson, I didn’t really talk to anyone, you know, after Danny was gone. It was good to have company, even just for a short time.
Danny had a small dent on his head above his right eyebrow. We were playing with cricket bats in the forest during the summer and I smacked him hard. By accident, of course. I would never do something like that intentionally. Now Danny was in a lot of pain, but he didn’t scream. He was a mute, somebody that couldn’t speak from the moment they were born. His facial expression said it all, though. We laughed it off afterwards and resumed our lightsaber battle. On those summer nights, the sun would not set for a long time, not until eight or nine o’clock. We had played and played until we realised it was getting very dark. The forest seemed very different when the sun had set as if the trees had all swapped places.
Michael Johnson was livid. I didn’t eat dinner that night. Jane was working overtime, leaving me with dad alone in the living room. We spent hours that evening staring into the telly, preferring not to talk. Escape to the Country was on and the soon-to-be homebuyers were very disappointed by the agent’s choice of property. It was a dingy farmhouse in Sussex. It was charming, they said, but untidy. It looked like a pig sty compared to the couple’s flat in London.
Dad never used to understand why I spent so much time with Danny, or why I was even friends with him at all. He didn’t understand why I wasn’t playing sports or hanging out with other kids at school. Danny was different, you see, and dad didn’t like that.
It was weird, I know, but at least it was comfortable.
The feeling of grief is quite hard to explain. It’s one of those things you can’t describe very well with words. Perhaps it can be compared to drowning. Picture yourself floating in the middle of the ocean. You are neither fully in the water or in the air, but lie dangling in the In-between, a realm of half-living and half-dying, waiting to pass into unconsciousness.
But an instinct urges you to fight. Your muscles spasm to kick and splash, anything for your face to emerge above the surface to take a sharp gasp of air, before sinking again. The process becomes exhausting. You begin to wonder whether there is any point in trying.
What can you do? It seems right to keep on struggling for your life. If you were covered in flames, you know you would give your all to save yourself. But drowning is different. It is a slow, gradual, mundane sort of death, somehow making it sting more. Sometimes, when your head bobs above the water, you peer around, looking for someone to save you. But it dawns on you that no one even knows you are here. You are stuck. No one is coming to rescue you.
Better to give up than nervously wait for someone to come. The In-between is a strange place. It has the ability to suck energy from you, making you feel limp. Struggling only makes the remaining moments of your life more difficult. Difficult — that is what life is. Why suffer in the end? It seems more reasonable just to sleep. You have had enough of weariness.
And so you float, sinking gently.
‘Do you think the dead ever come back to life?’
‘Why are you asking?’
The telly was on and it was quite hard to hear Ruby. An episode of Friends was playing and the timed laughter was loud and annoying.
‘I said, do you think dead people ever come back to life?’
She sighed. ‘Is this about your friend? Danny?’
‘Maybe. I was just thinking about it.’
Ruby was flicking through one of Maggie’s novels, a thick one. She wasn’t reading it. She enjoyed the sensation of having pages brush pass her fingers. The pages were too old and mushy to give you paper cuts.
‘What, you mean something like… zombies?’
‘No… That would be silly.’
‘Then, you mean, something like heaven.’
‘Yeah. I think.’
She paused to think for a while. I stared at her portrait on the wall. Nelson had taken down all the other canvases except this one. She had long hair and a fat head. Well, compared to the rest of the body anyway. She was much prettier in person.
‘I don’t know. I’d like to think there is one. Mom thinks there is one. She talks about it with me sometimes.’
Joey did something stupid which aggravated Chandler again. Phoebe gave a witty comeback, surprising everyone, only for them to realise that it was taken out of context and she was not paying attention to their conversation at all. The audience laughed, again.
‘My dad, he’s in heaven.’ She said, staring at the front cover. ‘He’s been in heaven for a long time.’
‘Oh.’
She put the novel on the sofa and reached for another book. One with more pictures, perhaps. She brushed her fingers against the recipe books and took down a large one, a hardback. Delia Smith was grinning on the front cover with an old-fashioned haircut, short and tidy.
‘Well, at least that’s what mom tells me.’
‘Do you think you’ll ever see him again?’
‘Who, dad?’
‘Yeah, your dad.’
She opened the book. Delia was holding a roast chicken in her arms and promised to teach you her secrets for the perfect roast dinner. The bird looked very brown, almost burnt.
‘No.’
‘Why? I think I’d quite to see Danny again. You know, if he’s in heaven.’
‘No, I don’t want to see him.’
‘Because he’ll come back as a ghost?’
Ruby didn’t laugh.
‘No. He’s not coming back.’
Danny always laughed when I was being silly. He was mute, but he wasn’t deaf. He really liked the one about Anakin crossing the road to get to the dark side. But Ruby was different. She wasn’t someone who smiled much. It seemed like she was becoming more and more bored the longer she stayed at the farmhouse. She had been away from home for a while, I guess.
‘I don’t believe in ghosts, Ruby. I think they’re just very silly. If Danny ever comes back, I think he won’t be a ghost. No, I think he’ll come back as something else.’
‘Like what?’
‘An angel.’
‘I don’t think dead people would come back as angels. No, I don’t think dead people come back at all.’
‘But, how can you be sure that’s how it works.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Exactly.’
Delia looked dreadfully happy with a stack of butchered meat. The different cuts were all prepared with different methods. The smile was fake. Nobody enjoys seeing that much blood.
‘I suppose we won’t know for sure until someone comes from the other side.’
Monica falls over and Ross gasps in horror. Joey gets locked outside in the snow. Roll credits.
Jim Longwood came at night on 7th December and smashed a plate over Maggie’s head. She screamed before falling over on the kitchen floor. He came at around seven and hammered his fists on the door. Maggie tried to keep him outside but was quickly overpowered. Jim cornered her into the kitchen, demanding to know where his daughter was. Ruby could hear it all upstairs. She hid underneath her bed when she heard his voice. Maggie whimpered. She was a frail old woman confronting a six-foot man and all she could do was weep. That wasn’t good enough. He picked up a plate and threw it in her face. Punches followed. Nelson came back in time to see his wife lying unconscious through the window. He tried to open the door, but it was no use. Jim had barricaded it shut with a cabinet. Ruby was snatched in the bedroom. By the time Nelson broke through, Jim had already left the house with Ruby through the back door. The police could not find them that night. He had already driven her far away from Darting.
Ruby’s mum had been hiding in the upstairs wardrobe. She had suffered too many beatings from Jim to know that struggling is useless. For the next few days, she could not stop apologising to Nelson or to Ruby. Your mum was not brave enough, she would mumble through her tears, your mum is a coward.
Maggie stayed in the ICU for some time. My parents got a call from Nelson and agreed to visit her, when things have settled down a little and if they could get off work that weekend. Jane took me with her a few days later, reluctantly, because Michael had refused to leave London to catch up with work.
The hospital is a strange place. Many people were badly broken. Some were wrapped up like a mummy. It seemed like everyone was groaning, and you could never tell if someone was just complaining about pain or asking for death. We found Maggie at the end of a corridor, resting on a long white bed that was far too big for her short and plump body. She was wheezing through the tubes, and her head had been bandaged tightly, making her look a bit purple. Nelson sat beside her, holding her hand. A small stack of parking tickets was piling on his car outside, but he didn’t care. His jaw hardly moved when he spoke. Maggie, on the other hand, looked peaceful. If her face wasn’t bloodied and bruised, it would look like she was just sleeping in fancy dress, pretending to be a ghost, perhaps, or an angel for a nativity play. I suppose she was too unconscious to feel any pain at all, temporarily at least. Nelson drove me to visit her after school on weekdays. It must have felt terribly lonely, seeing Maggie like this, wondering if she would still be alive tomorrow. But he held it together, for the most part. Sometimes he would stop halfway to the hospital on the hard shoulder to compose himself.
Maggie woke up a few days later. Nelson was still nervous, but at least he slept in his own house from then on. Maggie was not fully there. She had become like the others in her ward, half mumbling, half groaning. She started speaking more and understanding more around the Christmas holidays. Nelson told her what happened to Ruby, but she didn’t give much of a reaction. Mostly just moaning, and a lot of headshaking.
Ruby was in fact trapped in a flat in London, that was until Jim felt guilty and handed himself to the police. Nelson told me. We were sitting outside the ward when he broke the news.
‘Her mum is with her at their house in London. Things should be winding down from now.’ Jim was about to light a cigarette before a passing nurse scolded him. He shrugged and held the butt in his mouth, chewing it slightly.
‘Why couldn’t he just ask to see her?’
Nelson sighed and slumped into the plastic chair. ‘Things… aren’t that simple, Miles. Jim’s a bad man, a dangerous man. That’s why Ruby and Ellen were staying with us, to get away from him. He was violent, hell, he beat his wife hard. Ellen moved away when she was pregnant. She didn’t want to lose the baby. Ruby grew up thinking her dad was dead. He was as good as dead when he got locked up, but when he was released, the first thing my daughter-in-law did was to come over to our place, somewhere safe.’ He adjusted his jacket and stretched his neck side to side. ‘Ellen’s a good girl. She didn’t deserve this.’
We peered into the ward window to check on Maggie. Nurse Dana had just come in with lunch trolley.
‘I did an awful job raising that kid. Children get a little messed up if their parents aren’t around much. I messed Jim up. I couldn’t connect with him. Bloody hell, I want to think I tried, but I hated him. I guess he just didn’t want to talk. He’d been hurt too much.’
‘Why? What did you do?’
Nelson chuckled. ‘I don’t know why I’m saying all this to you, Miles. Maybe you’ll get it when you’re older.’ He ruffled my hair and took a deep breath. ‘Now, where’s Jane? I told the woman to get a drink from the vending machine ten minutes ago.’
Maggie had a habit of reading bedtime stories to me and Danny whenever we stayed over at her house. Not picture books or novels, but stories she would make up off the top of her head. She was a talented woman. Every single episode was filled with action-packed adventure. I decided to return the favour to her at the hospital. I would bring a stack of magazines from Nelson’s house and read them to Maggie, page by page. Her face was swelling so badly it was hard to tell whether she enjoyed it. Never mind, I guess the important thing was that she had company.
Maggie’s ward became emptier as the days went by. A few of the older patients had died. You can never tell with old people. Mr. Yeoman was shouting at the nurse one day and counting daisies the next. That said, nurse Dana was a sour character, and she didn’t make their last days comfortable. I suppose I’d be grumpy too if I had to see people die every day.
‘Maggie.’
‘Hm?’
‘Maggie, wake up. Dinner’s coming.’
The nurse hastily dropped a tray of stew on the bed table and left the room in a strut. I tried to feed Maggie. It’s something you have to do slowly, feeding sick people. When people are weak they can’t eat very easily and don’t have much of an appetite either. Maggie stuck her tongue out a little and slurped.
‘Hot…’
‘Sorry.’ I blew on the spoon and placed it on her lips.
Maggie took about a dozen mouthfuls before she gave up and lied down. She was too tired and drugged up for a conversation. Within five minutes, she was asleep again, snoring.
Nelson was already outside, gloves on, ready to drive me home. The snow had made the traffic congested so he wanted us to leave early. My parents would furious if I was late.
I killed Danny. I killed him myself. I took him down to the forest at lunchtime and we climbed trees together. After a while I suggested we go to the stream and climb some there. He agreed. I picked the willow that leaned by the waterside and dared him to get to the top. He took off his blazer and began to grab the trunk. His feet swivelled around the lower branches and he got to the top in no time.
He fell into the water. It was difficult to watch. It all happened so quickly. He dropped into the middle of the stream, gasping for air. He couldn’t swim. His arms were flailing but his head was almost completely submerged, bobbing up and down the water. I stood on the bank the whole time, waiting for him to sink. I didn’t know what to say or think. He had to go, he must go. It took a while for him to become motionless. I folded his blazer and placed it on the bank.
When the time came, I reeled his body in. I looked at his face one last time before I covered it. I stayed there for a while, wondering what on earth I had done. It was getting cold. I went back to school at around quarter past three and told my teachers about Danny. They phoned my parents and I was sent home immediately.
‘What did you do, Nelson?’
‘What?’
The rows of cars seemed to stretch for miles beyond the horizon. Apparently, a lorry had fallen over just before the next junction. A cloud of gas from all the exhaust pipes started to form on the ground.
‘What did you do to Jim to make him so angry?’
‘Miles.’ Nelson sighed. ‘We don’t need to talk about this.’
Someone behind us honked their horn, in vain, because everyone was stuck and there’s nothing you could do to make anyone move quicker.
‘It doesn’t make sense.’
‘No?’
‘No. You’re not a mean person.’
‘You don’t have to be mean to be a bad father. You just have to be stupid.’
‘Stupid?’
‘Yeah. Dumb as hell. I’m no different from Jim, really.’
The frustrated man behind us started shouting and swearing. Nelson rolled down his window and waved his middle finger. The lady in the next lane followed suit.
‘Yeah. I guess. I think I’m stupid too.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because I killed Danny.’
Nelson sighed and rubbed his face with his hands.
‘No, no. You didn’t kill him.’
‘No?’
‘You let him go, Miles. You let him go.’
‘What’s the difference? I let him die.’
‘Miles.’ He tapped two fingers, on both hands, against his temples. ‘It’s make-believe. It’s all in your head.’
‘I know.’
‘So?’
‘That doesn’t make it any less sad, does it?’
The lady started screaming and got out of her car, walking over to the car behind us. The angry man was still shouting until he saw her approaching. He quickly stopped talking and rolled his windows up. She started prodding at his windscreen, swearing her head off.
‘No, it doesn’t mean it isn’t sad. I know it’s been tough, Miles, with all the crap you’ve gone through. But it’s about time you moved on from Danny. You’re growing up. Grownups don’t have imaginary friends. Remember what Maggie told you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And you did what she said?’
‘Yes, I killed him.’
‘No, you don’t have to. He could have gone on a long trip somewhere, somewhere far away. You don’t have to kill him.’
‘But he is dead in real life, isn’t he?’
‘Yeah.’ He sighed. ‘That you can’t change.’
The cars in front of us moved by a few feet. The congestion had cleared a few yards ahead of us.
‘But Miles, that doesn’t stop you from changing the end of the story, your story inside your head. That’s up to you.’
Maggie died on 22nd December 2005, three days before Christmas. Not that we were in the mood for celebrating, anyway. Nelson had gone home after he tucked her in. Nurse Dana found her struggling to breathe during the night. She fumbled out into the corridor to look for help, but by the time she returned Maggie had gone. It was very quick, presumably painless. Everyone had been expecting it. It was silly to expect an old lady to survive such a blow.
The funeral was sweet and simple. Floral, too. Nelson had picked a bunch of white lilies from the garden and laid it on the coffin as a garland. He wanted it done and over with quickly. These things shouldn’t drag on, he said, because Maggie wouldn’t have liked to hog the limelight for so long. She hated attention. One of the reasons that they moved out into the country was so that their friends wouldn’t see them grow frail. They wanted to end quietly and peacefully, without disruption, and that was what they got.
Nelson took the news badly, of course. I had never seen a man cry. He wasn’t angry or frustrated, so I suppose he knew it was coming, too. He stayed calm during the ceremony with his children finally by his side. Except for Jim. I guess that’s the one wound that never managed to heal. Ironically, Nelson said the funeral was the best moment of his life. All the dreams he and Maggie used to have about the family coming together were finally realised, except Jim and Maggie weren’t there to see it. Sometimes good things come out of bad things. That’s just how the world works.
I still went to the farmhouse on weekends. Nelson’s children would be there sometimes, and Ruby, too. His health had been getting worse since Maggie left and breathing became more difficult. When it was sunny, he would take Maggie’s armchair and sit on the porch, gazing at the fields in his aviator shades. On happy days he would take one of the cigars he had saved and light it. He couldn’t really smoke it. He just held it in his hand and pretended to be the old gangster from The Godfather, doing those awful impressions.
Nelson never painted again. He said Maggie was his muse and it was all pointless without her. The pictures never went to an exhibition or to an art museum and, after all, she was his biggest fan. He had hung them on the wall for Maggie alone to appreciate, and she liked them. There’s no point in painting for yourself.
The feeling of grief is quite hard to explain. It’s one of those things you can’t describe very well with words. Perhaps it can be compared to drowning. Picture yourself floating in the middle of the ocean. You are neither fully in the water or in the air, but lie dangling in the In-between, a realm of half-living and half-dying, waiting to pass into unconsciousness.
But sometimes you’re not there alone. Sometimes there are other people drowning with you. You shout at each other, encouraging each other to kick in order to stay afloat. You hold on to each other for dear life. Sooner or later everyone huddles and become a human float. You’re all distressed, perhaps, but alive.
Land is nowhere in sight. Still, there’s hope. Between all of you, there must be a solution you could figure out. Maybe you should wait for help, or try to swim away together.
You may be drowning, but it’s easier to be alive when you’re not alone.
I went to the forest on New Year’s Day after lunch. Granddad came round and kept my parents busy. I had a chance to be with myself and I took it. I parked my bike on the top of the hill and went down the path to the stream. Danny was there, sitting on the bank, looking at the water. We sat there for a while, skimming stones.
‘Sorry I wasn’t here earlier. You know how it is with granddad. He never stops talking.’
Danny nodded. He picked up a stone that was way too heavy and threw it. It sank immediately.
‘You know, in a weird way, I’m glad I never met you. I suppose I must have seen you at some point. Brothers are supposed to do everything together, but you know how it sucks with Michael and Jane.’
He shrugged.
‘I think it’s best that we never met. You don’t have to go through all this.’
The key to good skimming is in choosing the right stone. I picked up a smooth one and it jumped for a good few metres. Danny smiled and looked into the distance. A flock of seagulls was passing by.
‘Shame that you died. Why did our real parents have to be violent, you know? Why can’t we live in a happy family like everyone else, with real parents?’
Danny pointed at the sky.
‘Fate. Yeah, I know. It was a rhetorical question.’
I sighed.
‘Listen, Danny, I think it’s time for you to go.’
He stared at me and frowned. He knew it was coming.
‘You’re not really here anyway. You should go back to where you belong.’
He picked up his coat and started slowly walking until he became a small dot at the end of the stream.
‘I’ll see you on the other side!’
I saw him wave from a distance and I waved back. I never saw Danny again.
© Manji Szeto 2017. All rights reserved.
Manji Szeto 