Ostrich: A Novel Page 9

  “You didn’t smile,” says Mum, looking over my shoulder at Dad. “Is everything all right? Did everything go okay with Mr. Fitzpatrick?”

  “Yes, thank you, Mother,” I say, which certainly isn’t the whole story, but isn’t a lie, either, because Mr. Fitzpatrick did see us in the end even though we were an hour late. (He removed my stitches without saying a word, but when he was finished he asked to see Dad alone for a moment. I waited in the corridor, and when Dad came out nearly fifteen minutes later he was grinning like a pupil who’s just been told off really badly and doesn’t know what else to do with his face. I asked him what Mr. Fitzpatrick wanted to talk about and he just told me to keep the dressing dry.) And then, to explain why I don’t want my picture taken, I tell Mum about the Aborigines in Australia who believe that having your picture taken is tantamount to having your soul stolen.

  “Oh,” she says when I’m through explaining. “And do you believe that, too?”

  (I think about the goalposts and really can’t see the connection. But Dad’s already been told off enough for one night, so I decide to protect him.)

  “Yes,” I lie. “And accordingly, I would appreciate it if you didn’t take any more pictures of me.”

  However, I can’t stop her from seeing the car.

  From my bedroom, if I’m completely still, I can hear the politeness rising through the floorboards. It’s obviously a big argument, because no one’s raising their voice by so much as a decibel. I put Jaws 2 in his roaming sphere and push my mattress into the middle of the floor so I can sit on the carpet in the corner, directly above the kitchen, but even then I have to really strain to hear the utility-room door being gently closed and the crack of Dad’s beer can as he slumps down on the sofa to watch TV.

  After a half-arsed exploration of a faded Airfix paint stain (a patch of carpet that he’s long since claimed in the name of Russian Dwarfs the world over), Jaws 2 reverts to sitting and staring at me from the middle of his plastic quarantine. He looks thin. When I lift him out of the sphere and cradle him, muzzling his teeth between a Vulcan salute, I can feel his ribs pressing against my palms like matchsticks. There’s no denying he’s lost weight. Moreover, when I turn him over to inspect his belly I notice a thin strip of white fur that definitely wasn’t there before.

  Google confirms that both rapid weight loss and white hair are symptoms of emotional trauma, which supports Chloe’s fugue state theory. I decide to run some tests.

  The best way to test for brain function abnormality is to measure the fluctuations in voltage from the various ionic currents between the billions of neurons in the brain during a variety of mental states, which sounds complicated but isn’t really, especially if you consider that neurons are a bit like dogs (but not really) and ions are a bit like water (but also not really). The neurons (dogs) spend most of their time swimming through the ions, which as well as (not really) being like water are also (not really) like magnets, because they have either a positive or a negative charge. The ionic currents start when the neurons (dogs) have a message they need to deliver. They climb out of the ions (water) and “fire off,” which is (not really) like shaking off the excess water (ions). But because the ions aren’t really like water, because they’re all (kind of) magnetically charged, they repel any other nearby magnets (water) with a like charge. This starts something (not really) like a domino effect, because when those secondary ions (magnets) are pushed out, they in turn push out a whole other set of like-charged ions, which in turn push out another set, and so on and so forth. What this creates is a current of ions (water), which crash out toward the edges of the brain. These are what we call brain waves, which are exactly (not really) like waves. And it’s these brain waves that carry the electrical charges of the ionic currents all the way up to the scalp, where they can be detected and measured if you glue loads of electrodes to someone’s head and link them up to a special computer.

  I don’t have any glue, so I decide to use a free sample of Shockwaves Power Hold Gel, which I took from a magazine I once found in a doctor’s waiting room (because I was too embarrassed at the time to ask Mum to buy me any). The reason I never ended up using the free sample was that the waiting room I found it in belonged to the doctor who gave me my own EEG test, which lasted twelve hours because he wanted to study the ionic currents of my brain during one of my seizures (which he would only call “events” until after the results came back). The glue that he used to stick the electrodes to my head reminded me so much of the gel I’d seen lacquered across David Driscoll’s forehead that I decided at some point in that twelve hours that I didn’t want Mum to buy me any after all. (I also can’t eat Polo mints now, either, because they remind me of CT scans.) When Mum found the hair gel sample a few weeks later in the back of the washing machine I’d already had to shave my head, which is why she suggested I keep it as a reminder that one day my hair would grow back. I told her I had no idea what she was talking about, and when she showed me the sample denied all knowledge. However, later I fished it out of the kitchen bin and hid it in one of the compartments in my tissue box. I was saving it for a ceremonial quiff to mark the return of my plumage, but through the ages men have made bigger sacrifices for science.

  Using my ingenuity and teeth, I am able to construct a near-exact replica of an EEG scanner from my Smithsonian Elements of Science Mini-Lab (Ages 14+), which I got (by request) for my ninth birthday. In layman’s terms, this involves connecting a mini-LED bulb to some wires, and fusing them to Jaws 2’s scalp with a dewdrop of gel. In thirty seconds it sets, “redefining” his “look,” and completing the circuit. Now all I need to do is give the dogs (neurons) some messages to deliver.

  The experiment is simple. If Jaws 2 is able to receive the messages, then it will mean that the neurons in a particular part of his brain will have fired off, which will then have set the ionic currents rolling, which will then have gathered into brain waves, which in turn will have delivered the electrical charges to his scalp. If this happens, then the LED bulb will light up. Different messages require different dogs (neurons) to shake off (fire off), so the more messages I can give them, the more accurate a picture I can get of Jaws 2’s brain activity.

  The first message is Exhaustion. I lower Jaws 2 back through the hatch into his cage, carefully feeding the wires behind him, and once he lands nudge him toward his exercise wheel. He stumbles on lethargically and immediately falls asleep. Annoyed, I try rocking the wheel back and forth, but like a stubborn sunbather determined not to re-hang a wonky hammock, Jaws 2 screws his eyes shut even tighter and dreams more furiously, so I prod him with a 5H pencil, which is the hardest one I have. The wheel fizzes around its axis like a firework as he bolts. I set my stopwatch for seven minutes and hold my pencil in readiness, should his pace slacken. Which it doesn’t.

  When the alarm sounds, the bulb is unlit. Which is weird. I don’t know exactly what I was expecting, but I do know that my brain waves powered a whole computer for the entire twelve hours of my test (which is partly why I was so surprised to find out I’d failed). Next I try exposing him to strobe lighting (which you can get online), then hunger (skewering a Parmesan crumb on a smoothed-out paper clip and suspending it from the roof of the cage just beyond his reach), then sleep deprivation (the 5H pencil again), then sleep (darkness plus patience). At no point does the bulb even flicker.

  I don’t hear Mum come in. I only realize she’s in my bedroom when my computer drifts off into screensaver mode and I see her reflection in the black. Backlit by the pollution from the landing and moonstruck (by the moon (obviously)), there is a ghostliness to her appearance that makes me swallow my gum. When I turn round I can clearly see the chevrons by her eyes.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” she says through parenthetical lips.

  “You didn’t,” I lie. “How long have you been there?”

  The question seems to stump her. Eventually, she says, “I don’t know. What were you doing?”

  “Tests,”
I reply, warily.

  “Did he pass?” asks Mum, optimistically.

  “I haven’t collated the results yet.” I cock my head to the side like a TV detective. “It may take up to five working days,” I add humorously, so she doesn’t suspect she’s now under suspicion.

  “Why have you moved your bed?” she asks.

  “I’ll ask the question round here!” I want to say.

  “Because variety is a slice of life,” I say.

  “It’s the spice of life,” she says.

  “That’s what I said,” I say.

  “Do you want some help moving it back?” she asks.

  “Yes,” I admit.

  When we’ve moved the mattress back to the corner of the room I ask Mum to help me turn it 90 degrees so it faces the door instead of the window, which I’ve been meaning to do anyway, because it would allow easier access to the plug socket and hide the Airfix paint stain on the carpet. But Mum says I can’t sleep with my feet facing the door. I don’t understand why not, because it wouldn’t change the position of my head relative to the wall cushioning.

  “Why not?” I ask. “It wouldn’t change the position of my head relative to the wall cushioning. And even if it did, which it definitely wouldn’t, I could wear my boxing helmet like on sleepovers.”

  “Because that’s how they carry you out,” says Mum.

  “What does that mean?” I say, trying not to get frustrated. “How who carry you out? What are you talking about?”

  Then Mum asks if she can sit down for just a little minute. She slumps down into the beanbag before I can grant permission, and then for exactly seven normal-sized minutes does nothing at all. (Her eyes remind me of David Driscoll’s front door in my anesthesia dream. I don’t believe there’s a thing behind them. (I doubt that her brain waves could light the LED.)) The beeping of my stopwatch wakes her like the click of a hypnotist’s fingers.

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I was miles away,” she says through a smile that crinkles her chevrons. “Have you got everything ready for tomorrow?”

  I tell her I have.

  “You know you don’t have to go back yet, if you’re not feeling ready. I’ve spoken to the school and they say you can take off as long as you like.”

  But I tell her that I can’t afford to miss any more school, not if I’m going to realize my potential, at which point the bones in her knees crack as she hauls herself out of the beanbag and envelopes me in a self-sealing hug. Over her shoulder I can see the memory she’s left in the beans. For some reason it makes me think of the green plastic chairs in the hospital waiting rooms and the overfirm mattresses on the ward beds, which are all far too hard to remember anyone. I think about what Mum told me in the ICU when she thought I was asleep and as suddenly and violently as a car crash my mistrust evaporates and I feel sorry for her.

  I stop her when she gets to the door because TV has taught me that this is the most opportune moment to ask an important question.

  “You know how I was an accident,” I start.

  “You weren’t an accident,” interrupts Mum. “You were a happenstance. Like penicillin. Or Coca-Cola.”

  “Okay,” I concede (even though I don’t really know the difference). “But you know how you and Dad didn’t plan on having me?”

  “Yes,” says Mum.

  I pause for dramatic effect. (This would come directly before an ad break.)

  “Do you ever regret it?”

  A change breaks over Mum’s face, like dawn or an egg. She looks almost angry. “You’re not allowed to ask me that,” she says. And then she leaves.

  Chapter Twelve

  According to Google, chewing gum can stay in your digestive tracts for as long as seven years, which is exactly as long as the Seven Years’ War and a whole year longer than World War Two. This means that if you ingested a piece of gum in Europe in 1939 in peacetime you wouldn’t outgest it until peacetime again on the other side of the war. Which is like if Hazel had hibernated at the start of Watership Down and only woken up at the end of the book without ever realizing that the warren had been destroyed.

  I know there’s no such thing as the future, but when you know you’ve got something inside you that won’t be gone until seven years’ time, it’s hard not to think a bit about what the present will be like then. I don’t have any specific prophecies or anything (because History is written by the winners which means that predictions must be written by losers), but it’s weird to think that I swallowed this gum as a child and I’ll discharge it as an adult.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Year 5s all look the same to me, except for the black one whose name is Michael. I know for sure that the one standing in the aisle before me isn’t Michael, but I couldn’t say absolutely whether or not it’s the same one from last time. Not until he opens his mouth and starts lisping.

  “House …” he begins.

  But I hold up a hand to stop him. One look at his spit-glazed tongue, crashing against his braced teeth like an exhausted sea lion flopping onto land to escape a killer-whale attack, and I know he has no use for the lesson I’m supposed to teach him. It’s obvious from the way the saliva froths like sherbet in the corners of his mouth that he learned long ago that life and the people in it can be cruel. Perhaps I’m softening in my old age, or perhaps I know how traumatized he must already be from meeting David Driscoll, but for whatever reason I decide to take pity on him.

  “Listen,” I whisper, beckoning him close (but not so close that I’m in range if the spit bubbles detonate). “The joke’s on you.”

  “W-hat choke?” he splutters before I can hold up my hand again.

  “Don’t talk, just listen.” I sigh. “You’re a pawn. And I know you’ve been told if you make it all the way to the back of the bus you’ll become a queen.”

  (This time my hand is quick enough to silence him preemptively.)

  “But let me school you here for a second, son,” I continue, allowing myself to start imagining what a hero this will make me to this poor boy, probably for the rest of his life. “It’s an ambush.”

  (I wonder how he’ll thank me. I guess it all depends on what he does when he grows up. I suppose with his speech impediment he’s unlikely to become a theologian or a therapist or a scientist or a sage, so maybe one day he’ll be an artist or an architect or an alchemist, in which case he might want to erect a statue of me. (I’d insist on something simple. Maybe a Gulliver’s Travels motif, like a forty-foot me bowed down (to symbolize my humility) with a child (to-scale) standing in my palm, gazing up at me through eyes full of wonder and renewed hope in humanity. Or maybe I’m releasing him into the air like a dove, so he can fly away on wings made of my infinite compassion. But either way, nothing too ostentatious, maybe marble or bronze (unless he does become an alchemist, in which case I suppose gold would have to do).))

  “David Driscoll,” I say, nodding conspiratorially to the front of the bus. “Looks like a spotty Irish Tintin. He’s the one who sent you, isn’t he?”

  The Year 5 nods (normally).

  “And he told you to ask how my mum’s piano lessons were going, didn’t he?”

  This time he shakes his head.

  “He jus thaid it.”

  “Said what?”

  “He jus thaid to arse you house it gong.”

  “No, he didn’t,” I say, wiping dry my cheek (subtly, pretending to readjust my cap, so as not to cause offense). “He said to ask how my mum’s piano lessons were going. Because if you’d just said how’s it going, it wouldn’t have made any sense when I told you my mum had no arms.”

  “Your mumps got no amps?” he asks, suddenly frightened.

  “No,” I explain patiently, congratulating myself for not impersonating the boy and renewing my resolve not to start. “My mum has plenty of arms. That’s how this works. You ask about my mum’s piano lessons and I act all upset because my mum doesn’t have any arms, and then you start crying, when actually all along there was nothing wrong wi
th my mum, which David Driscoll knew perfectly well or he wouldn’t have sent you here in the first place. Because if she really didn’t have any arms, then the joke would have been on me instead of on you.” I pause, considerately, to let him catch up. Then I smile benevolently down at him for long enough to really sear the image on his retinae, just in case he should want to re-create it at a later date in materials of his choosing. “But don’t worry,” I continue eventually, “because I’m not gonna do that to you, on account of my infinite compassion. So instead we’re just going to pretend that all of what I just said was meant to happen has happened, and that way the joke’s not on either of us.”

  For some reason the Year 5 still seems confused.

  “But he jus thaid to arse ith you whir okay,” he says, the spit webbing his lips like ducks’ feet and starting to annoy me.

  (I count to ten before replying.)

  “That’s not a joke,” I explain, calmly.

  “Tho what?” asks the Year 5, insubordinately.

  “Tho, he didn’t thay vat,” I say.

  I can see his eyes start to bubble.

  “I’m sorry,” I thay, internalizing my growing impatience. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m trying to help you out here, kid. Try and understand. This is all a joke.”

  “Ven who sit on?” he foams.

  “It’s on David,” I snap, “because his mum’s dead!”

  The second before the Year 5 bursts spectacularly into tears David Driscoll pops up at the front of the bus and looks over. Very slightly, more with his eyebrows than with his head, but at the same time absolutely unmistakably, he nods at me.