Things We Have in Common Read online

  Robert put his arms up high, his eyes wide like a ghoul and said, ‘Oh no, it’s the Lesbian Psycho-Stalker!’

  I ignored them (obviously) as well as the death-rays Katy kept firing at me from across the classroom. Aren’t bullies meant to get bored and leave you alone if you ignore them? That’s what adults tell you, but it’s a lie. I’ve been ignoring them all my life. They only go away if they go to a different school.

  The morning went on like that, with looks and insults. I went to the gym in first break. I knew no one would look for me there. I sat on one of the low wooden benches along the wall eating Maryland Chocolate Chip Cookies because the corner shop was out of Hobnobs, and for some reason Marcy Edwards popped into my head.

  Marcy was a girl in my year who got anorexia. She got so thin she had to go into hospital. I know it’s a stupid thing to say, and that I don’t know what I’m talking about, but when she collapsed in PE and the ambulance came and she was carried into it on a stretcher, I wished, wished, wished it was me. It’s not fair that you can get too thin to go to school but not too fat.

  I wondered what she was doing now, like if she was lying in a hospice bed somewhere, looking out through a big window onto lawns with bushes and trees, with chocolates and flowers on her bedside table, or if she was in Paris twirling round one of those fancy lamp posts with a million-dollar modelling contract. Or maybe she was dead. Maybe they couldn’t make her eat, like Dr Bhatt can’t make me stop eating, and she died. I thought any of those things would be better than being me.

  I couldn’t avoid Katy at lunch, though. She was eyeballing me the whole time, then the second I got up with my tray, she got up too – then Sophie, Beth and Alice. I glanced over at Mr Holland who was on duty, but he was looking the other way.

  They followed me down the corridor, through the changing room and out past the music hut, not saying anything but sort of closing in on me. I started whispering, hoping they couldn’t hear, then when I couldn’t stand it anymore, I turned round and said, ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘Ooh, don’t like being stalked, then, Doner?’ Katy said.

  ‘Lesbian,’ Beth added.

  I looked at Alice. She was watching me, but not like the others. Her eyes weren’t sparkling with the same viciousness. I don’t think she even wanted to be there.

  ‘I wasn’t stalking anyone,’ I said.

  ‘You’re a liar,’ Katy spat, leaning in. She twisted her face at me. ‘I saw you. In the window of Gap upstairs in the kids’ department, staring down at Alice like the saddo you are. You make me sick.’

  ‘Alice was scared,’ Sophie said.

  ‘Alice is scared,’ Katy cut in. ‘Jesus, I’d be scared too. Look at you! You’re a freak. You’re disgusting.’

  Tears stung my eyes. Not because of what they were saying. I didn’t care what they said. They’re idiots, and I’d heard it all before anyway. It was because Alice was there.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ I said and I walked back past them. I thought one of them’d shove me, but they didn’t – they let me through – and for a second I thought I’d got away.

  But then Katy said, ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ and I heard her shoes scuffing the concrete as she ran up behind me.

  I turned, but too late, crying out as her fingers stabbed into my neck, in the place where it kills, my knees giving way. I grabbed for her jumper, but she threw my arm off going, ‘Eurgh’, so I fell onto my hands.

  ‘I didn’t do anything!’ I said, standing up again. ‘I was trying to protect her! There’s a man . . .’

  Then she gobbed – right in my eye where she’d aimed it. ‘Just fuck off,’ she said. ‘Leave us alone. Leave Alice alone.’

  After I’d rinsed my eye in the toilets, I left. I just walked out the school gates. I couldn’t stay, especially not for PE where Mr Faraday wouldn’t care if they carried it on.

  I crossed to the bus stop over the road. I wanted to go home, but Gary might be there and I couldn’t face him. So I thought I’d go into town to kill the time, calm down a bit. I thought I’d get myself a Yog in the shopping centre, or some churros with hot chocolate sauce that smell so good it makes you want to empty your pockets on the spot. If I’m ever rich (which obviously I won’t be), I’ll have to live somewhere they don’t make churros or I’ll end up so fat I’ll be like those people that can’t even get up anymore and have to lie on their beds staring at the ceiling till the day they die.

  I sat in the bus shelter and tried to blank Alice from my mind – how she’d looked when Katy spat. I couldn’t do it, though. I kept seeing her face over and over – the shock in her eyes as her mouth opened wide, the laugh stifled behind her hand – so I only saw the bus at the last second, just as it was about to fly past. I stuck out my hand.

  It lurched to a stop, squealing and bouncing on its wheels.

  The driver threw his arms up when I got on, like to ask is this how I get my kicks, hanging round bus stops hailing buses at the last second, and when I got my pass out he wouldn’t look at it. He jammed his foot on the accelerator so I had to grab for the pole.

  I went upstairs where it was empty and looked out through the scratched plastic window at the trees and the people, at mums pushing pushchairs, joggers jogging and dogs chasing Frisbees on the common. It all looked so beautiful, so green and blue and full of life, but also like it wasn’t real – like it was a dream or a memory of some place I’d been before, long ago. And it was. It was the world I used to live in, when Dad was alive.

  I wished he could come back and everything could be like it was before he got too ill to stay at home. I wished he could come back for just one minute so I could feel his arms round me, holding me tight like he used to, because if that happened I’d be so grateful I wouldn’t care if everyone else I ever met hated my guts. And then I was pressing the bell to get off because suddenly I knew where I wanted to go.

  I didn’t remember the gates because I hadn’t been there for years – not since I was about ten. They were like those gothic ones you see in films that have a winding path beyond them, leading up to a scary house on top of a rock. The metal letters in the top spelt out Bushgrove Cemetery.

  I went through. Everything was quiet and still. It was so neat, the grass all mown, the flowers all red and pink in the beds along the driveway. I walked past the low brick building. Three pathways led off into the distance like massive wheel spokes through a hundred thousand graves. It was just as big as I remembered, and being the only person there that was actually alive made me feel a bit weird – like that if I stood still too long, I might start sinking into the ground without even realising what was going on till it was too late, and I was under a headstone too. Like the graveyard would swallow me.

  I went down the left path. I wasn’t sure, but I had a feeling it was Dad’s. The only thing I could remember from the funeral was a big tree near where they put him. I remembered sitting under it away from the huddle of people round his grave. I’d picked the petals off daisies, whispering that old-fashioned thing ‘He loves me, he loves me not’ – only I kept saying, ‘He loves me, he loves me, he loves me . . .’ Maybe that was the day I started with the whispering thing.

  I looked at the gravestones as I walked. They were either incredibly old or just quite old – like either so old you couldn’t see what words had been engraved on the stones anymore, or like people that’d died in the ’70s or ’80s, like Annie Stott who was nineteen when she died. Her grave had fresh flowers on it – yellow and white ones – and little china fairies were sat all round the headstone. I wondered who’d keep coming all those years with fresh flowers. Someone who really loved her. Her stone said 1959–1978: Snatched away too soon. But it didn’t say how. They seemed like funny words to put on a gravestone – ‘Snatched away’ – as if the person who’d chosen them (probably the same one that was still bringing flowers) was pretty mad. Mad at God – or mad at someone, anyway. I wondered if Annie had literally been snatched away by someone like you – maybe even by
you. Maybe you’d been taking girls for years and years and years . . . so long you couldn’t even remember how many you’d snatched away. If that was true, I thought you must be really clever, not getting caught.

  The tree I remembered was up ahead, off the path on the left. It was big with a great thick trunk. An oak, I think. Actually I have no idea what it was. Maybe it was an ash or a cedar or something else. Tree identification isn’t one of my stronger points – not one of my areas of personal expertise. Anyway, I traced an imaginary line from it to the place where I remembered everyone standing, and there it was. I saw it even though I was still quite far away – standing out from all the pale stone ones round it – black and shiny like a rich person’s kitchen worktop: Dad’s grave.

  I turned away, my cheeks burning. I thought, what am I even doing? He won’t want to see me – not like this! What if he doesn’t recognise me? And I wanted to run, but then I thought, oh God, what if he’s seen me and he does know it’s me? I thought how awful it’d be if, after five years of waiting and waiting for me to come, he had to watch me running off, having no idea why. So I pressed my cuffs into my eyes till I could breathe again and told myself to turn round. ‘Turn round,’ I whispered, over and over. ‘Turn round, you useless cow!’

  So I did (after about five minutes) and I made myself walk straight over to him, gripping my hands in fists and clenching my teeth so I wouldn’t chicken out.

  The gold letters shone out of the smooth shiny black:

  Thanos ‘Terry’ Laksaris

  1963–2006

  Beloved husband to Jennifer

  And dad to Yasmin

  Forever in our hearts.

  The ground over his coffin was filled with that grey gravelly stuff that looks like cat litter. There was grass growing up through it and a rusty metal vase on top.

  I touched the stone. It was so cold.

  ‘Hi Dad,’ I said. I had to look away over the graveyard so I wouldn’t cry. I didn’t want to cry. Not after making him wait so long to see me. Then, when I thought I could go on, I said, ‘It’s me.’ It sounded stupid saying that but he might not’ve known. I don’t exactly look like the skinny kid he used to swing round by the ankles and give piggybacks to. I stood there in silence then, feeling him there – his eyes on me, unbelieving, taking me in bit by bit – and I felt fatter than ever. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, and then without any warning, this giant sob sort of unfolded out of me, making me fall on my knees.

  When I’d recovered a bit, I traced over the word dad with my fingers. Then I ran my hands over all the gravel stuff with grass growing through it, moved the vase and climbed in. I sat with my back against the stone and my legs on the gravel and after a while I started talking.

  I told him everything. I told him how I hadn’t come for so long because I didn’t want him to see what a mess I was. How I’d tried really hard to be OK in the world without him, but how everything I did after he died felt wrong or bad, and how eating was the only thing that felt good, and then how I hadn’t really noticed I was getting big until it was too late and I couldn’t stop. I told him how everyone hated me, how Katy had spat at me.

  Sitting there, I remembered something the vicar said to me at the funeral. It was after the service, I think, when we were outside the church. He put his hands on my shoulders, bent down to look me in the eyes and told me, ‘Talk to him. And don’t ever stop because he’ll always be listening. It’ll help.’ I thought it was odd that I’d only remembered that then, leaning against Dad’s stone. But he was right. It did help. It was nice. I could feel Dad listening.

  I told him Mum was fine and that she missed him too. I didn’t mention Gary because, even though Mum’s always saying Dad would be pleased she’d met him, I wasn’t sure that was true. I thought it was probably just easier for her to think it was true. I’m not pleased she found Gary, so why would Dad be? And Dad would never of gone off with someone new. He loved us. He would’ve gone on loving us. I didn’t tell him about you either, in case he worried about me. I thought I’d already given him enough to worry about just by turning up.

  It was getting dark when I got up to go. I had to pick off about a million bits of Dad’s gravel that were stuck to the back of my legs first, because I didn’t want to take any of his gravel away from him. It wasn’t like he had much else. Then I promised him I’d come and visit again soon. I told him the next time I’d bring flowers and make his grave nice like Annie Stott’s.

  Mum and Gary weren’t in when I got back from the graveyard. I remembered they’d gone out to a restaurant because it was their anniversary. I went to my room and lay on the bed and looked at the galaxy on my ceiling and thought about nothing.

  I must’ve fallen asleep because the next thing I knew Mum was standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the yellow landing light.

  ‘You alright, Yaz?’ she whispered.

  ‘Yeah,’ I whispered back.

  ‘D’you want some curry? I brought you some back.’

  ‘Oh, thanks,’ I whispered. ‘I’m not really hungry.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  She didn’t go, though. She waited in the doorway for a minute, her hand on the handle. Then she whispered, ‘OK, love. Night.’

  The next day started off like normal, like any other day. I walked into the English room and Robert said, ‘Here’s Johnny!’ in this dramatic way, though I have no idea why. I don’t think anyone else knew either. Even Katy ignored him, settling for her predictable death-stare instead.

  But then, next lesson, it was Drama. We were all sitting around randomly, Alice over the other side with Avril.

  ‘So . . .’ Mr Webb said, wringing his hands together like the gay he is and running his eyes over us all as if this lesson was going to be the highlight of our lives, ‘. . . physical theatre.’ He’d already told us we were going to be doing physical theatre at the meeting. Apparently, we were going to put on an impromptu performance after our exams the next term. In case you’re wondering, ‘physical theatre’ is acting with your body rather than just with the words, and using your body to be the props as well, like being a tree or a cupboard or something (even though that makes it sound a bit shit, like what little kids in primary schools do).

  Anyway, no one yelped with excitement, but we were all watching him. Mr Webb’s nice. He’s a bit over-enthusiastic, which is a complete understatement, but it kind of adds to how he is. Gary met him at parents’ evening and said afterwards, ‘All that man needs is a tutu and he’d be away.’ That made me laugh because I could see Mr Webb twirling round like a walrus in a tutu with his big brushy moustache and not a care in the world. ‘So . . .’ he said, looking round at us all again with big eyes, ‘Romeo and Juliet.’

  Everyone groaned except Maddie King, who clapped her hands and bobbed up and down like a spaz. It’s torture for Maddie having to wait till June to get in through those exam doors and finally see her GCSE papers.

  Mr Webb put us all in pairs and even though we were sitting miles apart, he said, ‘Alice, you go with Yasmin here . . .’ The way it worked was two pairs of people were given the same scene and the scene had two characters in it. One person from each pair had to act one part, concentrating on really using their body to show the meaning, and the other person had to be their voice from off-stage. Alice and me got the same scene as Maddie and Steph – the one where Juliet’s asking the Nurse what Romeo said. Mr Webb said we were Juliet and Maddie and Steph were the Nurse.

  I said to Alice she should do the acting.

  She looked at me for a second, then she said, ‘OK.’

  Then Maddie and Steph came over and Maddie said straight off, ‘Well, obviously Alice has got to be Juliet, and I’ll be the Nurse.’ She glanced at Steph and said, ‘You and Yasmin can do the voices.’

  Nice, I thought.

  Steph opened her mouth like she was going to try and stand up for herself, but then looked at me and changed her mind.

  When we practised it, Maddi
e kept stopping to have a go at Steph, saying the lines for her, to show her how she should do them, and the third time she did it Alice caught my eye with a flicker of a smile on her lips. My heart started thudding. I had to look away and pin my eyes on the text so I didn’t spontaneously combust. It made me want to do a really brilliant voice for Alice. Or rather for us – Juliet.

  We were first up. I sat at the side Alice was on and Steph sat the other side for the Nurse part. And it was amazing. Really. Alice was amazing. I could see her over the top of the page – jumping up, holding her hands out as we begged the Nurse for news: ‘I pray thee, speak! Good, good nurse – speak!’ And as it went on, I can’t explain, but it was like we were so together, it really was like we were one person. Herandme. Meandher. The A Team. The AY team.

  ‘Oh, bravo!’ Mr Webb said when we finished, clapping, his eyes twinkling, and you could see he meant it. He was looking at me like he didn’t know I had it in me, and I wanted to tell him, Mr Webb, I don’t have it in me – it’s only because of Alice being with me, being part of me!

  It felt like God had finally noticed what a shit life I was having and actually decided to do something about it. And after, when we were watching some of the other groups, I got this wild and free feeling right in my heart that made it OK not to look at her – like that all of a sudden it was easy not to look. Which was crazy, because ever since Year 7 I’d had to literally do battle with myself (the How Long Can I Go Without Looking at Alice game). But right then, I didn’t even need the game. I could just watch the scenes and relax. Because I knew something special had happened – and because I knew she knew it too. I even left the drama studio first instead of waiting behind so I could follow her, like I normally did. Then, as I was going up the corridor past the dining room, I heard her call my name.

  She was sort of half-running up to me. ‘Listen,’ she said, looking round, tucking her hair behind her ear. She wanted to make sure no one was watching. She didn’t see Big Mary through the kitchen doors staring at us as she stirred the daily broth. She was too busy rummaging in her bag. Then she pulled out her sketchbook and opened it and, looking round again, handed me a piece of paper from inside it.