What Came Before He Shot Her

            “It’s the old nature and nurture thing. The predisposition is inherited. Look. This is a brain disorder: proteins not doing what they’re supposed to be doing. A genetic mutation. That sets someone up for psychosis. The person’s environment does the rest.”

            Fabia thought about Toby, what she’d seen and heard, and how the family attempted to shield him, about everything they’d done from the first to see to it that he would not be evaluated by someone who might pinpoint an illness that could spell misery for him. She said, “There’s clearly something wrong with the youngest. That’s evident enough.”

            “They all  need to be tested. Evaluated by a psychiatrist. Have a genetic history taken. What I’m saying is that my idea for Ness to enter group counselling is a load of bollocks. If she’s heading for a psychotic breakdown—”

            “If she’s in  one already,” Fabia offered.

            “Or if she’s in the midst of one, then we need to get on to this before something else happens.”

            Fabia agreed. But she wondered how Ness—both uncommunicative and uncooperative in sessions with a counsellor—was going to take having her mind probed in one way or another by a psychiatrist. Not well, she decided.

            A visit to the magistrate was in order, then. What Fabia and Ruma could not effect in the girl would surely come about if the magistrate’s court gave her the word. And more than the word: the option between cooperation or incarceration. The mere threat of an increase in her community-service hours would hardly make an impression upon her.

            “Let me talk to some people,” Fabia said.

            IVAN WEATHERALL, BEING neither an idiot nor a fool, had quickly put together a number of pieces to the puzzle of Joel Campbell once he’d taken that phone call from Kendra. Most of these pieces had to do with Joel’s talent and with Wield Words Not Weapons, but some of them related to the attempted mugging in Portobello Road. This, he’d earlier concluded, was so far out of character in the boy that only a case of mistaken identity could possibly explain it. In conjunction with Joel’s quick release from custody, there seemed to be no other answer.

But Kendra’s call had forced him to consider the possibility that there was a Joel he didn’t know. Since there were two sides to every coin—a ghastly cliche, but one that had an apparent application in this particular case as far as Ivan was concerned—it stood to reason that Joel had kept part of himself hidden from Ivan, and the truth was that the facts supported this conclusion.

            Ivan didn’t know about Joel’s dealings with the Blade. As far as the less wholesome individuals who populated parts of North Kensington went, Ivan knew only that Joel had rubbed metaphorical elbows with Neal Wyatt. And Neal was someone whom Ivan mistakenly saw as troubled, but not essentially dangerous. So while Ivan understood that something worrisome was brewing within Joel, he thought in terms of the home itself instead of the streets.

            What Ivan knew was this: The aunt’s boyfriend was a live-in. The father was dead. The mother was gone. The sister had been sentenced to community service. The younger brother was . . . well, rather odd. Change in the form of a new home, new school, and new associates was difficult for anyone to endure. Was there any wonder that Joel occasionally lost his grip on the ability to cope? The way Ivan saw things, Joel was a perfectly good lad. Surely, then, any potential for serious trouble could be nipped in the bud if the adults in his life all agreed on how to deal with him.

            Ivan himself had grown up under the firm but loving thumbs of his parents. Thus, firmness was what was called for, he decided. Firmness, fairness, and honesty.

            He decided to visit Joel at home. Seeing Joel in situ, as he described it to himself, would gain him further information on how best to help the boy.

            Joel admitted him to the house—obviously surprised but quickly altering his expression to shield whatever else was going on within him— and cartoon noise from upstairs suggested that the little brother was present as well. Beyond the entrance and in the kitchen, Ivan could see Joel’s sister. She was at the table, one foot propped up on the edge as she painted her toenails metallic blue. An ashtray sat next to the bottle of varnish. Cigarette smoke plumed upward in a lazy spiral. A radio playing on the work top added to the general cacophony of the household. Rap music issued forth, most of it grunted indecipherably by a singer later identified by the DJ as someone calling himself Big R Balz. Ivan said, “Could I have a word, Joel?”

            “I ain’t written nuffink lately.” Joel glanced beyond Ivan as if wishing him to leave. Ivan wasn’t about to be dismissed. “This isn’t about your poetry, actually. Your aunt phoned me.”

            “Yeah. Know.”

            “I’d like to talk about that.”

            Joel led him into the kitchen, where Ness looked Ivan over. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to. Lately, as she’d managed in the past, all Ness had to do was to fix her great dark eyes upon people to discomfit them. She was scornful on the surface but something else beneath it. That something else  made people uneasy.

Ivan nodded a hello. Ness’s full lips curved in a smile. She gave him a head-to-toe and made an evaluation of him that she didn’t bother to hide, taking in his lank grey hair, his bad teeth, his worn and countrified tweed jacket, his scuffed shoes. She nodded but not in an exchange of greeting. Rather, her nod said Man I know your kind, and she lit another cigarette from the dying end of the one in the ashtray. She held it between her fingers with the smoke coiling around her head. She said to her brother, “Dis’s Ivan, eh? Di’n’t t’ink I’d ever see him over here. ’Spect he i’n’t round dis part of town very often, innit. So how you like it, mon, seein how us ethnic types live?”

            “He ain’t like dat,” Joel said.

            “Right,” was her laconic response.

            But Ivan wasn’t put off by Ness. He said, “Good heavens, I’ve seen you before, but I’d no idea you were Joel’s sister. You’re in the drop-in centre, aren’t you? Playing with the children? You’ve obviously got a real gift for working with them.”

            This was hardly the response Ness expected to get from the man. Her expression fixed itself into place. She drew in on her cigarette and barked a harsh laugh. She said, “Yeah. Make a proper  little mummy, wouldn’t I?” She pushed away from the table and sauntered from the room, up the stairs and out of sight.

            Ivan said to Joel, “Did I say—”

            “Dat’s just Ness,” Joel said.

            “Bruised soul,” Ivan murmured.

            Joel looked at him sharply. Ivan met his gaze. His own was open and too difficult to look at, so Joel glanced away.

            Ivan sat at the table. He carefully screwed the top back onto Ness’s abandoned nail varnish. He nodded at a chair, meaning Joel was to sit as well. When Joel had done so, moments ticked by. Rap music continued to blare from the radio. Joel got up from the table and snapped it off. They were left with the sound of explosions upstairs: a cartoon character meeting his fate, Toby crowing with laughter as he watched.

In keeping with his determination that firmness, fairness, and honesty were called for, Ivan brought up the topic of Wield Words Not Weapons. More specifically, he brought up the topic of Joel’s use of the poetry event to serve his own interests. Ivan began by saying, “I’d thought we were friends, Joel. But I must say that your aunt’s phone call has forced me to reevaluate.”

            Joel—having taken the opportunity presented by turning off the radio to remain standing—leaned against the work top but said nothing. He wasn’t sure what Ivan was talking about anyway, although at this point he knew adults well enough to understand that clarification was not far off.

            Ivan said, “I don’t like being used. Even less do I like Wield Words being used. This is because using Wield Words for a purpose other than the creation of poetry runs in the face of what I’ve created the event to be. Do you understand?”

            Joel didn’t. He knew he was supposed to, however. That knowledge and the knowledge of his failure acted in concert to encourage his silence. Ivan read this silence as indifference, and he was affronted. He tried not to go in the direction of after all I’ve done and, in this, he was fairly successful. He knew enough about boys like Joel to understand that their behaviour was not about him. Still, he’d thought Joel different, more sensitive to nuance, and Ivan didn’t like considering he might have been wrong.