Taylor came to the house yesterday. I was dreading it. Dad had to work late again, so I only had to worry about Mum being embarrassing. She picked us up from school in our battered blue Ford Escort, which is basically a tin can on wheels. Taylor’s family have a Volvo and a Renault 5. Mum made sure we were both wearing seat belts – she doesn’t normally care – and then she gave us a carton of Ribena each to drink on the way home. She doesn’t normally do that either. It only takes five minutes to drive home from school, so it’s not as if we were going to die of thirst. I thought the car wasn’t going to start, but, on the third attempt, the engine coughed enough times to get going and Mum made a joke of it like she always does. So embarrassing.
We didn’t really talk much in the car. Mum kept looking at me in the rear-view mirror and asking Taylor and I stupid questions like, ‘How was your day?’ in a silly singsong voice. I said what I always say when she asks that question, fine, but Taylor went into way more detail and told her about the portraits we are working on in art. That annoyed me because I’m painting a picture of Nana and I wanted it to be a surprise.
When we got home, I watched Taylor’s face to see her reaction. The first thing you notice about Nana’s house is the paint. Nana really liked the colour blue. There’s a blue front door, windows and garage, and they all peel, like my nose when it’s burnt. Sometimes I give it a helping hand, I like the way the paint feels beneath my nails. There are net curtains that used to be white in every window and a concrete driveway that always has a puddle of oil in the middle. Taylor’s face stayed the same, even when she had to get out of the car on my side because her door was broken and gets stuck sometimes.
When we finally got inside, Mum said I should show Taylor my room, so I did. It didn’t take long, there’s not much to see. I told her that it was Nana’s room and that she died there. I thought that would freak her out, but it didn’t. Her face still stayed the same. We haven’t redecorated, so my room still has Nana’s stripy blue wallpaper with white flowers and there’s a blue carpet that’s completely flat from years of being trodden on. The twin beds match the wardrobe and dressing table, it’s all dark brown wood that smells of Mr Sheen. It’s like living in a museum but I’m allowed to touch the stuff. Taylor said she liked my room, but I think she was just being polite. She’s like that. She told me that her bedroom carpet is pink and we both agreed that might be even worse than blue.
She walked over to my bookshelves and I felt really uncomfortable. I said maybe we should go downstairs to see what microwaved delights Mum was planning on poisoning us with, but she just stood there as though she didn’t hear me. I don’t really like people touching my things but I tried to stay calm. Turns out, Taylor reads loads, just like me. She’s read some of the same books and talked about some others that I haven’t even heard of, but sound cool. When Mum called us down for dinner, I was actually quite annoyed, but then we carried on talking about books all the way down the stairs and while we ate our fish fingers and chips. We were still talking about books when Mum gave us a bowl of ice cream each. It had magic chocolate sauce on top, which comes out of the bottle all runny but then dries hard, like blood.
After dinner, Mum said we could watch the big TV, but we went up to my room and talked instead. When Mum came up to my bedroom and said it was time for Taylor to go, it made me feel sad and I asked if she could stay a little longer. Mum raised her invisible eyebrows in that silly way she does. She doesn’t have eyebrows like me because she plucked them off when she was young, so now she draws them on with a pencil and looks like a clown. She asked if Taylor would like to stay the night and Taylor said she would before I had a chance to say anything. So Mum called Taylor’s mum and she said yes too because it was a Friday.
We only have three bedrooms in our house and none of them are spare. Mum and Dad used to share a bedroom in the old house, but now they each have their own. Mum says it’s because Dad snores, but I know that really it’s because they don’t like each other any more. I’m not stupid. Taylor slept in my room with me, in Grandad’s old bed – I don’t think he would have minded.
Once we were in bed, Mum came in and said we had to turn the lamps off in ten minutes. Then she put two plastic glasses of water on the bedside tables. This is yet another thing that Mum never normally does, she seemed very concerned about my thirst all of a sudden. She stood in the doorway before she left, smiled at us both and said the strangest thing:
‘Look at the two of you, like two peas in a pod.’
Then Mum turned off the main light and started to close the door, until I panicked and asked her not to. She propped it back open with Nana’s robin doorstop. Once she was back downstairs, I said sorry to Taylor for her being a bit strange and that I didn’t know what she meant by the ‘peas in a pod’ comment. Taylor laughed and said that she had heard that expression before. She said it just meant that we looked the same. I’ve never seen peas in anything but a plastic bag in the freezer.
We did turn the lamps off after ten minutes, like Mum said, but we talked for way longer than that. Taylor was talking with her eyes closed and then just fell asleep. I don’t think it was because I’m boring. Even though everything was switched off, there was enough light from the moon peeking through the cracks in the curtain to see her face as she slept. I wasn’t sure what Mum was on about at first, I’m a bit shorter than Taylor and she’s very skinny, but she does look a little bit like me I suppose. We both have long brown hair.
There are three things that I have learned that I like about Taylor:
1. She’s actually quite funny.
2. She likes books as much as I do.
3. She has exactly the same birthday as me.
We were born at the same hospital, on the same day, just a few hours apart. If I had been born into Taylor’s family instead, my life would be so much better. I’d be picked up from school in a Volvo for starters and Taylor’s grandparents are still alive. But then my nana wouldn’t have been my nana and that would be sad. I watched Taylor sleep for almost an hour. It was like watching another version of me. I have made a friend. I tried not to, but maybe it will be OK because we’re like two peas in a pod.
Now
Thursday, 29th December 2016
Someone was in my room. He listened to the messages on my phone, deleted them and then told me it was my fault that I’m here in the hospital. It wasn’t a dream. I can’t sleep now, I’m too afraid. Scared of what I know, scared of what I don’t. I’m not sure how long it has been since his visit, but at least he hasn’t come back. Time has stretched into something I can no longer tell. I wish someone would fill in the gaps, there are so many, as though I’m trapped inside the body of someone who lived a life I don’t remember.
‘Here’s an interesting end to our morning rounds. Who can tell me about this case?’ I hear them gather at the end of the bed. The chorus of doctors all sound the same to me. I want to tell them to get out.
Just fix me or go away.
I’m forced to listen while they talk about me as though I’m not here. They take it in turns to share how little they know of what is wrong with me and when I’ll wake up. I have to tell myself when, the thought of it being if isn’t an option I’m willing to consider. As soon as they run out of wrong answers, they evacuate my room.
I must have slept because my parents are here again now. They sit either side of the bed, barely making a sound, as though there is nobody there at all. I wish that they would say something, anything, but instead they seem to be taking extra care to be as quiet as possible, as though they don’t want to wake me. My Mum sits so close to the bed that I can smell her body lotion and the scent triggers a memory of us on a spa break in the Lake District.