In the classroom, everybody stared at me when I went in, and I had to stand at the front and be introduced.
The kids sat at tables in pairs apart from one boy, who was all on his own: Abdi. I took the spare seat beside him.
By the time Mum came to collect me after school, I felt dead on my feet. I was leaning against the school fence in the spot where we agreed she would pick me up.
She didn’t need to ask if I’d made any friends because Abdi was standing right beside me, grinning. He stuck out his hand when I introduced them, and she shook it and complimented his backpack.
In the car, she said, “Abdi seems nice.”
“He’s really nice.”
“What are the other children like?”
“They’re okay.”
“Did you talk to them?”
“A bit. It was very tiring.”
The truth was that I hadn’t talked to anybody else because I’d concentrated on being Abdi’s friend. He was funny, and he showed me everything I needed to know. Not many other people talked to him, so it was mostly just the two of us sitting together in class and hanging out at break and lunch.
I didn’t want Mum to know that, though, so a timely reminder that my stamina wasn’t a hundred percent did the job of distracting her nicely.
“You’ve done so well to last the whole day. To be honest, I was expecting a call earlier.”
I rested after school and thought about my day. I made it to the table for dinner that night. Dad was home.
“To a good day,” Mum said and raised her glass of wine, and the edges of her lips. I was happy to see her smile was in her eyes, too. It wasn’t always.
I didn’t have much appetite, but I ate a bit and pushed the rest of the noodles to the edge of my bowl where I calculated Mum couldn’t see them from where she was sitting.
“Did you talk to Will Kelly?” she asked. “At school?”
I shook my head.
“He’s in your class.”
I knew that. I spotted him after I sat down with Abdi. He’s the kind of boy my parents probably thought I should be: a rugby/hockey/football boy with the kind of clear skin and confident posture you get only if you play sports all summer and every weekend. At break, I noticed he was surrounded by a group of boys and girls. They jostled each other and talked loudly.
I thought about joining them, but I decided to go with Abdi instead. He needed help moving some books for the librarian. Will Kelly could wait until we got the chance to talk when it was just us, and probably when I was a bit stronger. I didn’t want him to judge me on my breadstick limbs and my voice that didn’t have a hope of projecting across a cafeteria. I was confident this was a smart decision, but I didn’t think Mum would understand.
“I’ll talk to Will Kelly tomorrow,” I said. “I just didn’t get a chance today.”
“Who’s Will Kelly?” Dad says.
“You know, the Kellys who live on Chantry Road?” Mum said, as if she were referring to God or the prime minister, it was so obvious.
“Oh! Okay, that’s nice.” I could tell Dad still didn’t have a clue.
Silence. Mum topped up their wine.
Dad made an effort: “When did we meet them?”
“Noah’s sailing course. Last summer.”
Mum rewrites our history a lot. What she meant by that is the morning I sat on the side of the floating harbor and watched my peers learn to sail. They wouldn’t let me take part because of my central line.
Mum loved it because she got a bit dressed up for once, and had a coffee with the other mums in the sunshine while I helped the instructor’s daughter sort out life belts.
Dad nods.
“I thought we might be able to carpool with them,” Mum said, as if that explained everything.
To change the subject, I told Dad about Abdi.
“Where’s he from?”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t walk to school. His dad brings him in his taxi.”
“I mean where is his family from?”
“I don’t remember. But he said he might take the bus to school when he’s older.”
“Daddy means what country are his family from originally?” Mum never speaks with her mouth full, so she did a whole load of laborious chewing before saying that. Outside, the light was fading, and I could see a magpie scaring the smaller birds off the feeder.
“I don’t know.”
“What’s his second name?”
“He’s got two second names, but I can’t remember them.”
“Somalia, maybe,” Dad said. “Ask him if they’re from Somalia.”
Mum’s eyes rolled because Somalia was one of Dad’s favorite subjects. He began to give us a potted history of Somali immigration to Bristol, even though we’d heard it all before: “Lots more of them than you’d think . . . over decades . . . strong links between the camps and Bristol . . . quite a community now . . . do you remember that shop in Easton where we went to get the preserved lemons for the Nigella recipe . . . most of them live there . . .”
When Mum couldn’t bear it any longer, she cut him off by saying, “Anyone for dessert?”
As she went to take the ice cream out of the freezer, Dad leaned over and ate the rest of my noodles.
“You should ask Abdi where his family’s from,” Dad said. “It’s interesting to know people’s stories.”
“Okay.”
“Guess where I’m off to next week.”
“Timbuktu?”
“Ha! Not a million miles away actually, though maybe a few thousand.”
He sucked a noodle into his mouth slurpily and raised his eyebrows as if to say: “Keep guessing!”
“I don’t know.”
“Namibia. Skeleton Coast.”
“Where the shipwrecks are?”
“Shipwrecks that stick up out of the sand like carcasses. And sand dunes that look like shallow waves when you fly over them, but when you’re at ground level, they’re immense. They drop off into the ocean like the face of a cliff.”
“Will you go in a plane?”
“A small plane, yes, so we can fly low to get the shots.”
“You won’t use a drone?”
“No. I like to hold the camera and feel the picture with my own hands, see it through the viewfinder myself. You know you’re making something special that way because you connect with the scene. You’re the author of it.”
“Noah!” It was Mum, back in the room, cookie dough ice cream and bowls in hand. “You’ve gone white!”
Just like that I was back in the land of fatigue and fussing.
I heard my parents talking as I lay down in the next room. They were always bad at lowering their voices.
“Sounds like it went well today,” Dad said.
“I think so. The teacher gave me that impression.”
“You spoke?”
“Uh-huh.”
That made me feel upset because I didn’t like being spied on and reported on. I wanted Mum to take my word for it.
“A good start, then,” Dad says.
“I just . . .”
“What?”
“I want him to fit in.”
“I know. I do, too.”
“Do you think this boy is a suitable friend?”
“I’m sure he is.”
She said something that was too quiet for me to hear, and Dad said, “Seriously, don’t do this.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Don’t create a negative from something that’s good news. He’s had a good day. He made a friend. Shouldn’t we be grateful?”
A clash of cutlery and crockery and then Mum’s voice: “Sorry.”