Полная версия
A Pocketful of Stars
Edward nods at Dad before turning to me, a sad smile on his face. ‘And you must be her daughter?’
I swallow, and it’s like a great big stone is sliding down my throat landing, thud, in my chest. I can feel it right next to my heart.
‘If you could both take a seat, I’ll call you when she’s ready,’ he says, like Mum’s just in a meeting.
I don’t want to speak, so I play on my phone to distract myself.
Elle messages me just as I’m feeding my pets on this new app I downloaded. Lady, our Cavalier King Charles spaniel, would be horrified if she knew about my virtual cat. She gets jealous pretty easily. Once I had to look after our class hamster for the weekend, and I swear Lady wouldn’t look me in the eye for days after.
Elle: Hope you’re OK xxxxxx
Safiya: Going to see her in a minute. I’m scared. Xxxx
Elle’s message makes it all real again, and suddenly I can’t play the game any more.
In the next room there’s an old man lying in one of the hospital beds alone. He stares at the same spot on the ceiling for ages, and all I can think about is how no one is there to see him. And then I think about how I wasn’t there to see Mum yesterday at her flat, before she was called into hospital – all because of our argument.
‘That’s so silly, Safiya,’ Mum had said when I explained that I didn’t want to join the local theatre group. ‘Gaming isn’t a hobby . . . Hobbies require you to leave the comfort of your own room.’ She laughed, even though it wasn’t funny. ‘I would understand all this if you were a bit younger, but you’re in Year Eight now.’
‘James? Safiya?’ Edward calls for us. I jump, but I don’t stand. I can’t. For a moment my body doesn’t respond to my brain.
I turn to Dad, who is about to stand up.
I put my hand on his shoulder. ‘Is it OK if I go alone?’
I’ve been so used to it just being Mum and me, without Dad, that it would be weird to be the three of us again.
Dad frowns at me for a moment, and I think he’s going to say no, but then his face softens and he squeezes me back. I turn round, take a deep breath, and follow Edward.
He leads me to the entrance and uses a special key card to open the doors. Then he gives me some quick instructions: walk straight to the end and turn right.
It makes me think of Peter Pan and how they all get to Neverland. ‘Second star to the right, and straight on till morning.’
Except, instead of going to Neverland, I’m going to see Mum.
‘Would you like me to come with you?’ Edward asks.
I shake my head. Adults can’t go to Neverland.
I walk through and it’s like everything is happening in slow motion.
Doctors and nurses walk past me, barely glancing in my direction. I turn back and see Dad’s face as the doors close behind me. He gives me a small smile, which makes me feel a little bit stronger.
I rolled my eyes. ‘I knew you would say this,’ I countered. ‘Because you just don’t get it, do you?’
Mum crossed her arms. ‘Grow up, Safiya,’ she said. ‘You aren’t some mystery to me, you know. I know what it’s like to be your age. When I was younger I –’
I didn’t let her finish her sentence. Instead it was my turn to laugh. ‘Were you ever my age?’ I said. ‘Sometimes I just imagine you were always old with your boring job and your boring life.’
That stopped Mum in her tracks. Then she started again, and suddenly she was a moving train, picking up momentum.
‘You have no idea what I’ve had to do to get this job. I left home when I wasn’t much older than you, studied hard . . .’
What else did she say? I can’t remember, because I wasn’t listening.
The walk along the hospital corridor takes a million years. I have to remind myself how to move my feet.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
I pause at the halfway point. I can see Mum’s room now at the end. Sometimes, when I play an especially scary game, I save it just before something really bad happens, and do something else for a while, until I have the courage to face it. If this were a game I would click save and take Lady for a walk instead. But I can’t, so I just lean against the hospital wall. It’s cracked, the paint chipped and worn. It feels as if the whole building might tumble down, down, down and take me with it.
Mum sank down on to the sofa, her head in her hands. I thought for a moment that she was crying.
‘I’ve got a splitting headache . . .’ she said, rubbing her temples.
I thought it was an excuse, a way to stop us fighting.
So instead of backing down, I kept pushing; maybe this time I could win. And I picked the button I knew would hurt most.
‘Dad gets it,’ I said, relishing the way my words made Mum flinch. ‘He was going to take me to a gaming convention this summer. But then you took us to that stupid play, and I missed out on tickets.’
‘Oh, Safiya,’ Mum said, sounding annoyed now. She was still massaging her head. ‘Why did you come then if you hated it so much? Elle seemed to enjoy herself . . .’
I shrugged. ‘Because I had to.’
I could tell that upset Mum, but she swallowed down the hurt and carried on.
‘Look, I know you get along better with your father.’ I could taste the bitterness in her voice. ‘You don’t half remind me of it every day. But maybe you could just push yourself a little and –’
‘Just stop it, Mum!’ I interrupted. ‘I’m not going to the theatre group,’ I said with finality. ‘I don’t want to.’
Was it my fault? Did this happen because I upset her?
I want to ask the doctors these questions, but I’m too afraid of the answers.
I’m now right in front of the door to Mum’s hospital room. It’s open, just a crack. And then I see her face. My heart jolts and I turn away. I sit on an abandoned chair outside, head in my hands, blocking out the rest of the argument.
I shut my eyes, take my glasses off, and press the palms of my hands hard against my eyelids, until white spots form against the black. I try to erase the picture of Mum in her hospital bed, to go back to a point before all this happened. I imagine that I’m staring at the solar system, and I try to believe – really believe – that I’m somewhere far away.
A while later I’m still sitting there, eyes trained on the floor now, avoiding the door. A nurse walks out, letting out a startled ‘Oh!’ It’s almost comical, the way she jumps back. All I see are her white shoes acting out her surprise.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, wiping the tears that now fall freely down my face. ‘My m-mum is in there and I c-c-c–’ I break into sobs, barely able to breathe.
The nurse kneels in front of me, but I don’t look her in the eye. Instead I stare at her name badge, which says ‘Amanda’ on it.
‘Deep breaths,’ Amanda says. ‘Come on, darling, you can do this. Breathe with me.’
She inhales, holding her hand to her chest, and I copy her. She exhales and I follow.
After a few moments I’m breathing normally again. Someone else comes to bring me a cup of water. It tastes metallic and I only sip enough to wet my lips.
I put my glasses back on, stand up and turn back to the door, making sure to keep focused on the wheels of Mum’s bed, and not her face.
‘Are you sure?’ Amanda asks.
I nod.
‘OK.’ She leads me in and guides me to Mum’s bed. ‘I’m going to slide the curtains shut, give you some privacy, but I’ll be on the other side if you need me. All right?’
‘Thank you,’ I mumble.
Amanda looks at me for a moment, before shutting the curtains behind her.
It takes me a full minute to look up at Mum once we’re alone.
Slowly I move my eyes up from the base of her bed, across the thin sheets that cover her legs, all the way up to her hands and the tubes attached to the back of them, and finally to her face.
The first thing I think is how great she looks. It sounds odd, but she does. Her skin is almost glowing. Right now, there aren’t any dark circles to show the hours of staying up late working at her computer, no frown lines to shape her concentration, and her mouth isn’t downturned in disappointment, the way it often is when we speak.
I’m sorry I was so horrible, I think, but I can’t say it aloud.
Every time Mum and I argue about one thing, three or four previous arguments get dragged into it. We’ve now battled out each of our issues so many times that they no longer make sense. We’ve never managed to resolve anything either, so our problems just grow and grow, like a monster that feeds off our frustration with one another.
It wasn’t like this before secondary school. Saturdays used to be fun. We would play and laugh, and Mum liked me for me. But then it changed, and now it’s like I can’t do anything right.
Our last argument felt like it grew so big that the monster had taken over Mum’s flat entirely, suffocating us both.
Mum looks relaxed now, almost like she’s smiling. Like she has a secret.
Her long, brown hair is fanned out across the pillow, her curls perfectly placed. She looks like Sleeping Beauty, hands clasped over her chest, waiting for the kiss of life.
Without thinking, I stand up, lean over her, and stroke strands of hair away from her face. The smell of her musky perfume has somehow managed to linger on her skin, even after everything that’s happened. It makes my chest tighten.
Mum’s had the same perfume since I can remember. It’s surrounded every hug she’s given me. But we don’t hug much any more and I’d forgotten how much I missed it.
I kiss her on her forehead and my tears sink into her skin.
I sit back and wait for the magic to happen.
But this isn’t a fairy tale, and princesses don’t wake up after kisses.
‘Wake up,’ something whispers into the darkness. ‘Safiya, wake up.’
When I next open my eyes I’m lying on my back staring up at the sky. The stars wink at me, brighter than I’ve seen them before. There are thousands of them, millions, coating the land like a great big blanket. The moon greets me shyly in a crescent wave.
I sit up. It takes a while for my eyes to adjust, for me to get my bearings. I’m in some sort of courtyard.
It’s hot, hotter than I’ve ever known it. Like opening the oven door just after you’ve baked something delicious. I almost expect my glasses to fog. The smells are wild and sweet.
Wood. Rose, maybe? And orange.
I look up to see an enormous house staring back at me.
Where am I?
Silver branches scale the house walls, covering almost every inch of it. They bleed into the windows and out of the doors.
They sway, like blades of grass in the breeze, and tap at the glass of the windows, as if asking to be let in. Except there is no wind. The night is as dry as lavender sprigs. Looking closer I can see the branches are as thick as a snake, with leaves like gnarled fingers protruding from them.
They reach out for me, and that’s when I see they’re not swaying at all, but wriggling like little worms.
I swear I can hear them whisper my name. ‘Safiya,’ they hiss. ‘Safiya, welcome.’
I shudder, step back, and look around me.
This is the biggest house I’ve ever seen, about the size of the block of flats Mum lives in.
There’s a set of swings to the right of me, a couple of cars parked in front of it, and a great big iron gate to my left leading out on to the road.
How did I get here?
I try to think back to the last thing I was doing. But it’s as if the memory is just out of reach. My brain feels foggy, like I’ve just woken up. Moving around is strange too, like when I step I’m floating, instead of walking. I wave my hand in front of my face and I can see it blur a little.
That’s when I remember what I was doing, and the realization comes crashing down like hailstones. I was sitting by Mum’s hospital bed. But then how did I get here? And where am I? I need to leave this place. I’m trespassing after all, I think, looking at the big iron gate.
Once, when Elle and I were little, we snuck into her neighbour’s garden. It wasn’t exactly our fault.
We were playing Frisbee and it flew into the vegetable patch next door. It started off with us jumping over the fence to go and get it, but then Elle turned to me.
‘It’s like being in The Secret Garden, isn’t it?’
She was right. This wasn’t like any normal vegetable patch. It was huge, taller than both of us. We played hide-and-seek, and pretended we were Jack, climbing up the beanstalk into giant territory. Except a very real giant – or so we imagined at the time – in the form of Elle’s neighbour threatened to call the police when he saw us there.
‘I was just getting my Frisbee,’ Elle said sweetly.
It worked, and we didn’t even get in trouble.
Still, Elle’s not here right now, even though I wish she was.
She would know what to do.
I rush towards the gate and pull it open with a great big creak. But it’s almost as if something is trying to pull me back, like an elastic band stretching as far as it can go.
And I swear I hear a voice whisper, ‘Come back, Safiya.’
But when I turn round to see who spoke, no one’s there.
I’m not sure what to do with myself once I’m away from the house. There are rows of equally giant houses to my left and right, a park across the street framed with palm trees, and a corner shop that sits on the other side of it.
It seems to be open. Maybe I can ask them to tell me where I am. Maybe they can explain why it’s so hot, why there are trees I’ve never seen in England before, and why I keep hearing someone call my name.
I don’t seem to have anything on me, even though I could swear my phone was in my pocket when I got to the hospital.
I run across the street, eyes darting left and right, looking out for people and cars. But as my foot hits the pavement on the other side of the road, the corner shop starts to shake and crumble. The roof sinks in and the walls tumble down, down, down, like a sandcastle washed away by the ocean.
The park turns to ash. Replacing it is a barren wasteland of sand for miles, mounds of it everywhere.
I turn round, but the house has disappeared too.
Before I have the chance to panic I hear another voice, a different one this time.
‘Visiting hours are over, love,’ someone says from a distance.
I whip my head up. I had been sitting next to Mum’s hospital bed, my head resting just next to her right arm.
‘Sorry to wake you,’ the nurse, Amanda, adds. I try to make sense of my surroundings again. ‘I’ll give you five minutes,’ she says, before retreating behind the curtain.
What a strange dream, I think as I try to reorient myself. It felt so real – like a hallucination, or something. Every time I blink it feels like I’m still in it, like my body and mind has been split into two. It was warm there, and I feel hot in my coat, even though it’s freezing outside.
From the corner of my eye I see silver branches crawling up the wall and along the floor, reaching for me. I look down and see sand. But then I blink and I see the branches are only wires from Mum’s monitor, and the sand is the shine from the fluorescent lighting.
I try to shake off my sense of panic, but it feels as if there are party poppers going off in my chest. I check my phone. It’s been twenty minutes since Elle texted me. How did so much happen in that time?
A violent shiver passes through me as I make to leave, and suddenly I can feel the midwinter chill again. It’s like I’ve been dunked in ice-cold water. It slams against my chest and for a second I can’t breathe.
I lean against the curtain rail next to Mum’s bed. My limbs feel tingly, like they’re not quite attached to me, and my head is swirling with the dream.
Eventually, after I say goodbye to Mum, I make my way back to the reception desk, where I find Dad, and notice again the room with the old man in it. It feels like a lifetime since I first saw him. A young woman and two children surround him now. He’s chatting and smiling with her while they play with the settings on his bed. He has a pile of books on his bedside and a tartan blanket by his feet. They make the room look alive.
I’ll bring some of Mum’s things next time, I think.
When we get home I still feel a little strange. I wave my hand in front of my face and I swear it blurs, just like in the dream. It makes me wonder if I’m still asleep. I blink once, then twice, and hope that everything becomes normal again. But nothing’s normal any more, is it?
I want so much to go back to last week, before everything went wrong. We’re going to see Mum again tomorrow after school, but what am I supposed to do until then?
My feet tread the familiar path up to my room, and I automatically jump on to my computer, without really meaning to. But as soon as my headphones are on, it feels like the rest of the world disappears.
I click on the button, which resembles an old scroll, and wait for the screen to load.
My bedroom walls pull apart brick by brick, and in their place sprouts an ancient fairy palace; my bed folds up into a giant nest; and, instead of street lamps and terraced houses, my windows show me a dense forest as tall as the eye can see. And, all at once, I feel calm.
The world of Fairy Hunters unfolds around me. I’ve been playing it since I was ten, and I’m getting pretty good at it now. It’s an online game where you’re put into teams to battle it out – fairies against wizards. I always choose Team Fairy. The aim of the game is to protect our nest of eggs from the wizards, who try to steal them to make potions.
There are four kinds of fairy on each team – earth, fire, water and wind. Earth fairies are the protectors; they go in first as they have the best defensive spells to protect their team. Then come the fire fairies – the close-range spellcasters. They need to cast quickly and attack the wizards before they have the chance to defend themselves. Next are the water fairies, the long-range spellcasters. Their job is to cast spells that take more time to conjure but are more powerful. They usually hang back. Then there are the wind fairies. I’m one of them. Our job is to help the rest of the team. Most people don’t like playing as wind fairies, because they think we’re useless.
We’re not. A lot of the time we’re the difference between winning and losing the game.
As I walk through the map and see the ruined palace in the distance – ivy growing all over it, walls cracked – I can’t help but remember the house from my dream with the silver branches. The park, too, looks similar. Except, instead of palm trees, in Fairy Hunters, the trees are oak; and, instead of a corner shop, there’s the Wicked Woodlands where the wizards live.
Almost an hour later I’m just about to be crowned most valuable player when Dad’s voice floats up from the living room beneath me. ‘Safiya!’ he calls, piercing the bubble that my headphones have formed. ‘Dinner!’
And, just like that, the spell is broken.
The next day at school everything’s a little strange. The teachers keep talking to me in really high-pitched voices, eyes creased with sympathy. It’s the way strangers talk to Lady in the street. Usually she wees on them in response. She does that a lot when people are nice to her.
As I was getting ready to leave Maths for lunch Ms Belgrave called me over, handed me a pack of sweets and winked, like it was a secret. Except, instead of winking she kind of just twitched her eye. I didn’t wee on her, the way Lady would, I just took the sweets and said thank you.
I suppose Dad will have told the teachers about Mum, but that doesn’t explain why everyone else is staring at me. I keep checking to see if I have toilet roll on my shoe or a giant spot in the middle of my nose.
‘What do you think, Saff?’ Elle asks halfway through lunch.
I turn to her, eyes wide. I realize I haven’t been listening. I’d been thinking about the strange dream I had at the hospital yesterday.
Izzy saves me. ‘I think he’s cool,’ she says.
That’s when I realize they’re talking about Matty Chung, Elle’s latest crush. I glance over at him, where he sits with his best friends Jonnie and David.
I don’t know how to respond because I don’t really think anything of him, or any boys, for that matter.
I remember when we were in Year Seven and no one else talked to us. Sounds weird, but I preferred it. We used to have a sleepover at Elle’s house every Friday night. We would do our homework first while Elle’s mum baked. It was usually cookies or a cake that she would let us have as a treat before dinner. Afterwards we always watched a film and then stayed up late chatting or playing silly games in bed when we were supposed to be sleeping.
But then Year Eight happened, and we made more friends, and now everyone wants to hang out at Maccies after school or go to the cinema with boys. Everything’s changing so quickly that it feels like my world is crumbling, just like in the dream. Like everything I’ve ever known is made of sand; one big wave could wash it away into the ocean.
‘Saff !’ Elle whispers furiously. ‘Don’t stare at him. He’ll know we’re talking about him.’
‘Sorry.’ I smile sheepishly and turn back to my lasagne.
‘What’s the latest anyway?’ Elle asks. ‘How’s your mum?’
Three pairs of eyes turn to me just then, and I want to shrink away from their sympathy, hide from their curiosity.
‘I don’t really know,’ I admit, playing with my food. ‘Mum’s in a coma still. Apparently she had some sort of stroke. There’s a fancy name for it, but I can’t really remember it now.’
What I do know is that being in a coma is kind of like you’re asleep, except you can’t be woken up by loud noises or dogs licking your face in the morning.
Often the patient – which is how they keep referring to Mum – wakes up after a few weeks, once their body has recovered from the trauma. I don’t think about the other outcome, which is that some patients never wake up.
The doctors asked Dad and me if Mum had any symptoms in the weeks leading up to the stroke. The main symptom, they explained, was a headache about a week or two before.
My heart dropped when they said that, because Mum had complained about a headache during our argument. And then I’d . . .
I didn’t tell the doctors about it, though, because that would mean I would have to tell them about the argument, and I don’t know if I could bear to find out that it was all my fault.
‘She had an operation on the first night, so now all we can do is . . . wait,’ I finish lamely.
Waiting feels so . . . wrong. I want to do something, to help. But instead I just have to live life like normal.