swearing versatility … And when it comes to works of bloody art …”
He lifted his shirt. There was a whole garden tattooed on his chest: hedge, trees, dozens of flowers, butterflies, birds.
“That’s just the bloody start. I’ll get a bloody forest on me legs, mountains on me back, bloody sky on me bloody head.”
Despite herself, and her determinationto stay cool and distant, Mina leaned forward wide-eyed.
“But you’re just a boy!” she heard herself saying.
“Aye, and I had it done when I wasn’t even twelve. Me uncle Eric done it. He’s a proper tattoo artist. They wanted to lock him up but they didn’t cos he’s all I’ve got. But he can’t do no more tattoos on me till I’m sixteen. Then I’ll get the rest.” He lowered his shirt again. “We’re messing up the bloody world, Mina. We’re gonna burn it, blow it up, destroy it. We’re killing everything. Every lovely living thing’ll be extinct. But it’ll all be on me, Mina. I’ll be a bloody monument to everything that’s gone.”
“He’s not as pessimistic as he makes out,” said Malcolm. “Otherwise why bother with all the gardening?”
“For love,” said Steepy.
“Bloody love, you mean,” said Malcolm.
“Aye. For bloody love.” He looked at Mina.
“What’s your story, then?”
Mina shrugged.
“What’s yours?” she said.
“You’ve had it. What’s the point of school when there’s bloody gardening to be done?”
“What you doing here, then?”
“Hanging out with me mates. Like Malcolm. And Wilfie there.”
Wilfred glared. He bared his teeth. Steepy raised his hand.
“Down, boy,” he said. “You are me bloody mate, Wilf, whether you want to be or not.”
Wilf went on glaring, looking nothing like a mate of anyone’s at all.
Steepy winked at her.
“He’s OK,” he whispered. “As long as he keeps taking the pills.”
“The pills?”
“Aye. They wanted to put me on them as well. No bloody way! I said. Bloody pills!”
Despite herself, she wanted to be his mate, too. She did want to tell him her story, and to hear more about his, to talk about his garden and his tattoo, and to ask him how a bird that was born for joy could sit in a cage and sing, and to tell him about charms of goldfinches. She wanted to tell him about playing with words on a page, and about the words she used to write on her own skin. And she wanted to tell him that they’d wanted to put her on pills, as well. But she didn’t. She went back to being distant. She turned away from him to Alicia, who smiled and touched her arm and softly hummed.
“So,” said Malcolm. “That’s getting to know you time over. Time for Maths. Sorry, Steepy. Bloody Maths.”
They did worksheets at the tables. A couple of assistants came in, Chloe and Joe. Chloe sat with Mina and guided her through the problems. “7 ? 6 is the same as 6 x __.” “123 ? 9 is the same as 9 x ___.” They were easy. She heard Wilfred curse out loud and fling his pen across the room. He stood up and stormed to the window waving his fists. She saw Malcolm gently guide him back to his task again. She heard Steepy speaking the answers to Malcolm and saw Malcolm writing them down. Alicia sat beside Mina and whispered how she always found sums so hard. Mina helped her and she saw the tears turn to smiles as the solutions appeared to her. She also saw the thin scars on Alicia’s forearms. She touched one of them gently. Alicia flinched, then whispered very softly, “I used to cut meself, Mina. Not no more, though.” Mina looked through Alicia’s hanging fringe into her eyes. She wanted to tell her about the day when she was in her tree, carving words into the bark with her knife. She had rested the blade on her own skin. She was almost at the point of carving a word into herself. She didn’t tell her, though.
Alicia smiled sadly.
“I seen sense,” she said.
“Me, too,” whispered Mina. “Let’s do more sums.”
Mina went on helping Alicia with her work. She kept glancing around the room, watching these people she had found herself with. A bunch of misfits in a place that accepted them as misfits. She knew them, she understood them. It was so weird. The kids she was with all had trouble fitting in anywhere, but here in a place of misfits they were accepted and they all kind of fitted in and for a few hours in the day they weren’t misfits anymore. And there were other rooms with other misfits all around them. Troubled, damaged, shy, scared children. Kids with pains and problems and yearnings. She tried to stop herself thinking it, but she couldn’t stop herself. She recognized these kids. In some way, they were just like her. But she kept on trying to stay distant.
At lunchtime, she ate macaroni cheese and chocolate cake. She walked around the concrete playground in the sunlight with Alicia. She stood at the fence and stared towards the city that she’d come from. She wondered about her mum, where she was, what she was doing. She found herself thinking about what Steepy had said, that one day everything she saw would be destroyed. But could that be true? There couldn’t be total destruction, there couldn’t just be nothing. Yes, maybe one day the human race would be extinct just like the dinosaurs. And our cities would crumble into dust. We’d destroy the Heaven we’d helped to make. But there’d be survivors.
The birds flew over her, sparrows and finches and crows: light-boned, beautiful creatures. They were fragile-looking things, but maybe they were really the strongest and the bravest of all. Surely they’d outlast us, like they outlasted the dinosaurs. They’d keep on flying, building their nests, singing their songs, laying their eggs, tending their young in the ruins of our cities and in our rampant woods and fields. A new wild world would grow around them. And maybe they’d be the ancestors of marvelous creatures that we could have no notion of. She imagined a future world, a future heaven, inhabited by marvelous birdlike creatures, and she was glad.
Malcolm came to her and asked if she was enjoying herself. Yes, she told him. He said they’d be writing stories that afternoon – her kind of thing, he thought. She just shrugged again and said nothing. He told her he had a secret that hardly anybody knew. He’d written a novel and he was trying to get it published. He said how scary it was, like he was exposing himself to the world and it made him feel really stupid and young.
“Know what I mean?” he said.
She shrugged.
“Yes,” she said.
“But I’ve just got to be brave about it,” he said. “Haven’t I?”
“Suppose so.”
He smiled gently at her. She looked away.
“I think you’re brave,” he said. “I think all of you are brave, coming to places like this, trying to grow up. It’s hard, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“Trying to discover how to be yourself.”
She nodded.
“There’s many ways to do it, Mina. A different way for each and every one of us. And you know what? It goes on all your life.”
She said nothing. She watched a flock of pigeons flying fast across the rooftops.
“We don’t mind if you think we’re not the place for you,” said Malcolm. “Whatever you decide, it’s nice to have you with us, even if it’s just for a short time. It’s nice to have been part of your growing.”
She looked down at her feet.
“What’s it called? The novel?”
“Joe Carter’s Bones. It’s about a boy who collects all kinds of bones that are lying in the streets and fields around him – birds, mice, frogs. And he gets feathers and bits of leather and grass and leaves and petals and sticks, all kinds of stuff that were part of living things. Puts them together in his shed. Shapes them into things that look like they could live. Tries to breathe life into them again. Tries to make new kinds of creatures with them.”
