“Oh, no, Noah, no!” Abdi shouted.
I kept climbing. At the top of the fence I clung to the post.
I looked down at him and I laughed, from the surprise of having made it all the way to the top. It felt awesome to be up there. I could see all across the scrapyard and down the canal. Abdi’s face looked so angry and upset, but I didn’t care.
“Come on!” I said to him. “It’s amazing.”
The top of the fence was unstable, so I had to cling to the post as I got my legs over it.
“Get down! Noah!” The mist from his breath was like a puff of smoke. He shook the fence.
“Come on! I dare you,” I shouted.
He shook the fence again, violently this time, but I kept going, finding footholds, until I was close enough to the ground to jump down into the scrapyard.
Abdi started to climb. He was much faster than me. I ran across the yard and he caught up with me right at the edge of the canal.
Close up, the surface of the water looked like silk. It reminded me of a dark, slippery scarf that my mum sometimes wears. The air was so cold that it made time seem frozen, and next to the massive, still pile of metal, the movement of the water made the canal look like a passage to somewhere else.
Abdi and I stood facing each other beside the water, both of us out of breath. The pain in my abdomen had become very sharp. Abdi’s arms hung by his sides, but his fists were clenched.
“That’s enough,” he says. “It’s enough. We need to go.”
“Abdi,” I said, “please.” It was hard to get the words out, because I was so out of breath. I wanted him to feel elated, just like I did. “Please, just let me do this, just this one thing.”
“Seriously, have you lost your mind? I am so sick of you and your fucking family. Everything revolves around you; you poke your noses into other people’s lives and you don’t care about the consequences so long as you get what you want. Your dad’s photos made me sick, do you understand, they’re sick!”
“Don’t talk about my dad like that!”
I loved and hated the taste of all of these cruel words on my tongue and in my ears, I must admit. It felt honest but frightening, too. It felt very real.
“Look at the stars, Abdi, and the moon and the frost. It’s amazing here. Let’s have our drinks now. Please.”
“No.” He was shaking. “I won’t.”
When he said that, I was so angry everything seemed to get a kind of momentum that was exhilarating and sickening all at once. I shoved him in the chest, away from the water, hard enough to make him stumble backward.
“My time’s nearly up. Gone. I’m going to be dead! Do you understand? I was only trying to do something nice together before I die, but you want to wreck it.”
I gave him another shove, and again he stumbled backward.
“How will you feel when I’m gone?” I said to him.
He came very close to me. His eyes were black, shiny buttons in the darkness.
“Well, my time’s up, too,” he said.
“What do you mean?” That wasn’t what I expected to hear. “Stop playing games.”
“I’m not playing games.”
On the other side of the scrapyard gates I heard a car rolling to a stop. Headlights passed over us, then went off. A car door slammed shut, and this noise was followed by the sound of a metal door rolling open.
Abdi didn’t react. He was looking at me in a funny way. Everything went quiet again.
“Who would you have if it wasn’t for me?” The pain in my side goaded me on, made me crazy, and the urge to be cruel felt unstoppable as the pain pinched harder.
“Who would I have?”
“You’d have nobody.”
“I’d rather have nobody than be somebody’s puppet. Come on! Let’s go. I’ll help you back over the fence.”
It was time to punish him. For what he was saying and for the tests he had failed, including this one: the only one that truly mattered.
“You’re pathetic,” I told him. “Nobody likes you, nobody else wanted to be your friend. You never fitted in at school without me. People feel sorry for you and for your family.”
That did it. He shoved me, just as I’d shoved him, but harder.
My feet disappeared from beneath me; there was no hope of staying upright on the frost-shiny ground. Instinctively, I struggled to keep my balance, and as I did, there was a confusion of noise: a man’s voice, and a dog barking.
Then it happened. At first it felt triumphant as I fell through the darkness toward the water. It took me in with a slap, sucking me down in a way that I knew there was no coming back from. It pressed against every part of me, accepting me, keeping me.
The weight of my backpack dragged me down deep very fast. It was on so tight.
From my hospital bed, I remember very clearly that I struggled to get the backpack off. It was instinct that made me do it. Instinct, and the terrible fear of dying that arrived right at the last minute and felt bigger than anything else. Above me, the last thing I saw was Abdi’s shifting silhouette, and I wondered if he would try to help me, but of course he couldn’t swim.
The feeling of panic had become very intense, and my lungs felt as if they were on fire, but the memory stops there. As I got the backpack off, my head hit something hard and sharp. Blackness exploded like spilled ink across a page.
I want to tell Mum and Dad about all of this. I can hear their voices around me in the hospital, and I want to tell them I’m sorry and I made a very big mistake, because of course I know now that I should have spent my last moments with them.
I want the rising heat to stop, but it feels as if it’s melting me.
I want to see my parents one more time. I desperately want that. It’s all I want.
The sounds of people moving around my hospital bed are becoming more and more distant, but they’re increasingly frantic. I sense that very clearly, and that’s how I know I’m going now, that it’s time. The atoms of my soul are fading, dissolving, disappearing.
I hear my father’s moan, low and terrible, but it’s my mother’s voice that pierces through the others loudest, and clearest. “Noah!” she shrieks over and over again.
My heart burns hotter than the rest of me because I know I got it wrong in the end.
This isn’t how I wanted it to be for any of us.
Noah’s Bucket List Item No. 13: Be in control when the end comes.
Goodbye, Dad. Goodbye, Mum.
I say it in my head.
I hope they can hear me.
It’s the best I can do.
When I get home it’s late, and I find Becky tucked under a blanket, watching TV.
“How are you?” I ask. She looks tired but comfortable. The color of the marks on her face has deepened and spread, showing the extent of the damage that was inflicted. There’s a packet of painkillers on the floor beside her.
She pulls the blanket up to her chin. “I know I look much worse, but I feel better. How about you?”
Her voice croaks as if she’s hardly spoken all day.
“I’ve got a couple of calls to catch up on, then I’ll join you. Can I get you anything?”
She shakes her head.