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  I smile. ‘D’you know what, I think I might have done.’

  Mikey aims a punch at my arm, but I catch his fist before it lands.

  ‘Now, now,’ I say.

  He gives up trying to get back at me and looks at the TV, ignoring me. I watch it as well. It’s a repeat of some lame American sitcom.

  ‘Pass me the remote,’ I say.

  Mikey shakes his head without taking his eyes off the TV. ‘No way. I was in here first.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘That’s the rule. Whoever’s in here first gets to choose what to watch.’

  I shake my head. ‘Says who?’

  ‘Mum and Dad,’ Mikey says.

  ‘Mum and Dad aren’t here right now, are they?’ I say.

  Mikey doesn’t say anything, just gawps at the TV.

  I look at the remote control in his hand. I could just snatch it now. He’s not strong enough to stop me or to get it back.

  ‘I’m gonna ask you nicely,’ I say. ‘Please can I have the remote control?’

  He shakes his head.

  ‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Have it your own way.’

  I lean across and grab the remote. Mikey strengthens his grip on it, so I grab his wrist with my other hand and twist it till he weakens. I grab the remote, switch channels and sit back on the sofa.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ Mikey says, massaging his wrist.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Give me a Chinese burn.’

  I look at him, pretending to be confused. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t do anything.’

  Mikey sighs. He gets up from the sofa and walks towards the door. ‘I’m gonna tell Mum and Dad about this.’

  I shrug. ‘About what?’

  ‘You’re a loser, Johnny.’

  I smile at him. ‘Make me a cup of tea while you’re up, Mikey.’

  Mikey flicks me a V-sign and leaves the room.

  Summer

  We get out of the car at the hospital. While Grandad goes and pays for a parking ticket, Mum looks me up and down disapprovingly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re dressed all in black, Summer.’

  I shrug my shoulders. ‘And?’

  ‘Your nan’s in hospital, Summer. Don’t you think it seems a bit wrong to be dressed like you’re going to a fune—’

  Mum stops herself as Grandad walks back over with the parking ticket.

  ‘Let’s not argue about this right now,’ she says. ‘Visiting time starts in a couple of minutes so let’s get going.’

  We walk towards the hospital. Mum carries a big bunch of flowers with her. They’re way nicer and posher than the ones I got for Nan’s birthday the other day.

  I start imagining what Nan’s going to look like in the hospital bed. In my head, I can see her lying there, pale and ghostly, hooked up to machines, tubes coming out of her mouth and her nose and her hands and her chest, clinging on to life. I imagine the machines beeping as they keep her alive. I imagine her in her nightdress, looking wrinkled and grey-skinned.

  The automatic doors swish open in front of Mum and Grandad and they walk in. I follow behind. And as soon as I get inside, the hospital smell fills my nostrils. It takes me right back to the first time I went to hospital to see Nan. I’m still the same scared little girl, still creeped out by everything around me. I want to go somewhere else and pretend this isn’t happening.

  I feel a hand on my shoulder and almost jump out of my skin. I turn to see Grandad. He smiles at me.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asks in a quiet voice.

  I nod.

  Grandad sweeps his hair over his head and sighs. ‘Funny places, hospitals, aren’t they?’ he says. ‘Never liked them myself.’

  I smile. Or at least I try to. It doesn’t feel like a proper smile.

  ‘Don’t know what we’d do without them though.’

  I nod. He has a point. I just wish I didn’t have to be here. I wish Nan wasn’t here.

  We take the lift up to the third floor in silence and then walk out into a smelly corridor, past the nurses’ station and on to a ward. We see Nan before she sees us. She’s lying on her bed at the end of the ward. She looks up as we get there. She doesn’t smile, but I see a little sparkle in her eye. It’s there for a second and then it’s gone. It makes me feel a bit better.

  ‘Hello, Jean,’ Grandad says. He leans across the bed and kisses her on her dry-looking lips.

  Nan hardly moves at all. She doesn’t say anything either. Her mouth doesn’t move. She just looks at us.

  ‘How are you feeling today?’ Grandad says.

  Nan coughs a little. She opens her mouth to speak and nothing comes out for what seems like ages. Then a croaky, tiny voice – not Nan’s voice – comes out.

  ‘Better.’

  And that’s it. Everybody pauses, like they’re waiting for her to say something else, but she doesn’t. She just carries on looking at us. And then, as though she’s just been jerked awake, Mum steps forward and kisses Nan on the cheek.

  ‘Hello, Jean,’ she says. She steps back and holds up the bunch of flowers she bought. ‘I got you these.’

  Nan nods her head slightly to say thanks.

  And everyone is silent again. After a while, Mum turns to me and says, ‘Summer, do you want to help me get something to sit on?’

  We go over to the corner of the ward and bring back chairs for me, Mum and Grandad. Before I’ve even had a chance to sit down, Mum tells me to go and ask the nurses if they have a vase for Nan’s flowers. When I get back with it, Mum takes it and sorts the flowers out.

  I sit down and look at Nan. She doesn’t look as bad as I imagined earlier. But she doesn’t look like herself either. Her hair looks different – wild and bushy and unbrushed. Her face looks drained and her skin is a kind of bluey grey colour. She’s always had a wrinkled face as long as I can remember, but now I see wrinkles that I’ve never noticed before. At least she’s not as full of tubes as I thought she might be.

  She just lies there, propped up in bed, listening as Grandad babbles on and on about nothing in particular. He tells her all about the fan belt on Mum’s car, which I can tell winds Mum up even though she smiles and says, ‘I’ll get it fixed, Harry. I told you.’

  Then Grandad goes on about what time the postman came this morning and how we still haven’t had any rain and the lawn is crying out for it. Nan doesn’t say more than two words in a row the whole time.

  I just sit and listen and think about her. I wonder how she’s feeling, whether she’s scared. I would be if it was me lying there in a hospital bed. I wonder if she’s gonna get better as quickly as she did last time, or whether the more times you have a heart attack, the worse you become. I wonder whether she knows the answer to that question.

  After a while, Mum stands up and says, ‘Right, who wants a drink? Jean? Tea? Coffee?’

  Nan slowly shakes her head. She shakily lifts her arm and points towards the bedside cabinet.

  ‘Water?’

  ‘Please,’ Nan croaks.

  Mum walks over to the cabinet beside Nan’s bed. She takes a glass and a jug of water.

  ‘Is this water fresh?’ she asks Nan.

  Nan nods her head ever so slightly.

  Mum pours the water and then puts it on the tray thing that goes over Nan’s bed. Nan picks it up unsteadily and drinks. Some of it misses her mouth and dribbles down her chin. Nan wipes at it with her wrist. I look at the tube that’s been taped on to her hand and I wonder why they haven’t taken it off, seeing as there’s nothing going in or out now.

  ‘Harry? Drink?’

  Grandad nods. ‘Coffee, please. I’ll give you the money.’

  Mum shakes her head and looks over at me. ‘Come on, Summer. You can help me.’

  When we’re over by the drinks machine and Mum is making Grandad’s coffee, she says, ‘Summer, you don’t have to stick around if you don’t want to. Why don’t you scoot off?’

  I don’t know what to say.
There’s a part of me that desperately wants to get out of here right away. This place gives me the creeps, especially seeing Nan like that. But there’s also a part of me that feels like I should stay for Nan.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I say.

  Mum smiles and nods. ‘Yes. You’ve made your nan’s day by coming, but she won’t expect you to stick around. I don’t think she’s up to too much today.’

  ‘OK, then. If you’re sure.’

  ‘Just come over and say goodbye, won’t you?’ Mum says.

  We walk back over to the ward. Grandad’s sitting up really straight in the uncomfortable plastic chair, looking sort of awkward. When we get close up I can hear that he’s talking about putting weedkiller on the path down the side of his and Nan’s house. Nan stares into space, like her mind’s somewhere else entirely. I stand at the side of the bed, waiting for Grandad to take a breath so that I can say I’m gonna go.

  But before I get a chance, Mum butts in and says, ‘Summer’s going to go now, Jean.’

  I look at Mum, give her a look to say she didn’t need to speak for me. Then I turn back to Nan. I look in her eyes, searching for that familiar sparkle, and I want to cry. But I smile instead.

  ‘Bye, Nan. Love you.’

  I lean over and kiss her gently, nervously, on the cheek. I’ve kissed my nan goodbye a million times, but I’ve never felt so nervous doing it before. It feels like if I kiss her too hard, she’ll break.

  As I’m bent over, kissing her, she whispers something really quietly in my ear. ‘Take care, love,’ she says. And then she says something else that I don’t get, cos it’s too croaky and quiet. And I don’t like to ask her to say it again, so I stand back up and smile. I go and say goodbye to Grandad and Mum and then I leave the hospital.

  As soon as I get outside I feel better. It feels like I can breathe again. I look in my bag, get my earphones out and put some music on, then get some gum. I head for the bus stop.

  Johnny

  We’re sitting on the metal bench at the bus stop in Kingston. I see the 57 approach so I nudge the others and get up. Once we’re on, we head straight to the back seat on the top deck. The bus crawls along, stopping every couple of seconds either for traffic lights or at a bus stop or for a taxi that’s pulled out in front of it.

  ‘You know, Jake,’ Drac says as he tries to spin his new football around on his index finger, ‘you should have paid for this ball, seeing as you were the one that lost the last one.’

  Jake sighs. ‘You’re not still on about that, are you? I went and got it back for you. It was the mad old Poisoned Dwarf that knifed it – she should be paying.’

  Drac’s ball spins off his finger as the bus brakes sharply and stops at a bus stop. The ball falls to the floor and rolls away along the central aisle. Drac scrabbles up from his seat to get it. He comes and sits back down, his face slightly flushed. ‘I’m just saying, a contribution might have been nice, that’s all. This ball cost me ten quid.’

  Jake shakes his head and sighs. He puts his hand in his pocket and pulls out some change. He sifts through it and passes some to Drac. ‘There. Maybe that’ll shut you up,’ he says. ‘Happy now?’

  Drac takes the money and looks at it. He adds it up in his head and smiles. ‘Yeah, that’ll do nicely. Thanks.’ And he pockets the money.

  ‘Half of the ball is mine now though,’ Jake says. ‘So you need to get my written permission whenever you want to use it from now on.’

  Drac gives Jake a sarcastic raised eyebrow and then sticks his fingers up at him. Jake laughs.

  The bus moves away from the stop. A branch from a tree at the side of the road brushes against the window with a cringy screeching noise. And I notice someone walking up the stairs. A girl, chewing gum like crazy, dressed all in black, black fingernails and all. She’s got a pretty face even though she’s trying to hide it behind a load of make-up and hair. She looks vaguely familiar, but I can’t think where from. She flicks her hair out of her eyes as she gets to the top of the steps and looks for somewhere to sit. I stare at her, hoping that she’ll look at me. She doesn’t though. She sits down about five rows in front of us, takes a battered book out of her bag and starts reading.

  I feel a nudge in my ribs. Drac. He grins at me. ‘What you gawping at?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Not that I’m fooling Drac. He grins even wider. And he looks over at the girl. ‘She’s fit.’

  Jake overhears and leans over Drac. ‘What?’

  I shrug. ‘Nothing.’

  Drac laughs and says, ‘Johnny-boy was just saying how he fancies that girl over there.’

  I shake my head. ‘No, I wasn’t. Shut up, Drac.’

  Jake looks over at the girl. Not that you can see much of her – just the back of her head. ‘Yeah, she’s all right. Probably a seven. Maybe an eight at a push,’ he says. He sits forward in his seat a little and calls down the bus, ‘Excuse me.’

  But she doesn’t look round – for one thing because she doesn’t know that Jake is talking to her and for another she has her earphones in.

  I squirm though. ‘Shut up, Jake.’

  He looks at me and smiles. The bus lurches to a halt at another stop.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he calls again. ‘Pretty girl dressed in black . . .’

  She still doesn’t look round.

  ‘Stop acting like a three-year-old,’ I tell Jake.

  Drac just laughs.

  Over on the end of the back seat, Badger flicks through his comic, acting like he’s not with us at all.

  ‘What? I’m helping you out,’ Jake says.

  I lean across Drac and try to give Jake a dead arm to shut him up. He laughs it off. Then, as I’m expecting him to start it up again, he leans back into his seat and sits quietly.

  The bus pulls out into the traffic again. I sneak a glance at the girl. She’s totally engrossed in her book and her music. She looks cool. Way too cool for me. She isn’t even aware of my existence.

  And then, out of the corner of my eye, I see something fly towards her. It comes from beside me and smacks her in the back of the head. A screwed-up bit of paper, I think. I see her tense up. After a second or so she turns round. She sees us all on the back seat and figures that it must have come from us, which, judging by the way Jake and Drac are chuckling, is a pretty good guess. She rolls her eyes. She picks the ball of paper up and throws it back. It lands on a seat a couple of rows in front of us. And then she turns back to her book.

  I look at Jake. ‘What did you do that for?’

  Jake smirks. ‘What? I didn’t do anything.’

  I shake my head and look out of the window. We’re just coming up to the station – nearly home. Which is just as well cos I want to get off now, before Drac and Jake can do anything else immature.

  But over to my right, I sense more movement. Another screwed-up paper ball. It flies through the air and hits the girl on the back of the head again. She puts her book down.

  Next to me Drac and Jake crack up laughing. The girl turns round. She sees them and rolls her eyes.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Jake says. ‘But my friend there fancies you.’ He points to me.

  I shrink down in my seat. I can’t believe he’s said that. Why’s he acting like a total numbskull?

  The girl looks angry. She narrows her eyes. But I’m not sure if she heard what Jake said or not because she’s still got earphones in. She looks like she’s ready to come and give Jake a good slap though. She doesn’t even look at the rest of us. She raises an eyebrow at him, chews her gum and then blows a bubble about half the size of her face. She gives Jake the middle finger. The bubblegum pops. She turns back round and reads her book. Next time the bus stops, she gets off without looking back at us.

  Dad’s been home literally minutes when I hear him call up the stairs, ‘Johnny, can you come down here?’

  I sigh. I know exactly what this is gonna be about.

  When I get downstairs, Mum and Dad are both in the kitchen holding cups of tea. />
  ‘What happened while we were at work?’ Dad says.

  I shrug. ‘Dunno. I was at football training most of the time and then I went into Kingston.’

  Dad raises an eyebrow. ‘Let’s not play silly games,’ he says. ‘Are you going to tell me or not?’

  ‘Tell you what?’

  ‘Mikey’s arm . . .’ Dad says.

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘That.’ I smile involuntarily.

  ‘Yes, that.’

  ‘He was being an annoying little idiot,’ I say. ‘He deserved it.’

  Dad shifts about. I can tell he’s annoyed with me.

  ‘He’s thirteen, Johnny,’ he says. ‘Thirteen-year-old boys are annoying. But you’re sixteen, for God’s sake. You’re supposed to be a man. You should be a bit more mature than to do something like that.’

  I sigh. ‘Is that it? Can I go now?’

  ‘No,’ Dad says. ‘We haven’t finished talking about this. There was a mark left on Mikey’s wrist, Johnny.’

  I don’t say anything. Mikey deserved a mark on his wrist. Mum and Dad don’t see half of the stuff that Mikey does to me, mainly because I’m not a grass like he is.

  ‘Your mother and I should be able to trust you when we’re not here,’ Dad says.

  Again I don’t say anything. What am I meant to say to that?

  ‘Maybe we can’t trust the two of you to be left together when we’re out.’

  ‘Suits me,’ I say. ‘Why doesn’t one of you take Mikey to work with you?’

  Dad gives me a look and I can tell that he’s on the verge of losing it with me. ‘I want you to go upstairs and say sorry to him,’ he says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me. Now.’

  I sigh. I turn, go back up the stairs and walk straight into Mikey’s room without knocking.

  ‘Hey! What do you think you’re doing?’ he says angrily.

  ‘Dad said you grassed on me. He made me come and say sorry to you,’ I say, trying to get as much contempt into my voice as I can possibly manage. ‘So here I am. Sorry, you grass.’