Looking after Mum: Chapter 1

Chapter 1:

I don't quite know where to start. This is so confusing. I never should have begun in the first place. He was stupid to suggest it. Maybe I should stick to fairy stories in the future. I can't stop now, though. But...I can’t write as if I was in the present. It would get even more perplexing then. I know. Imagine. Imagine ourselves back , way back, four years ago, when I was twelve years old. Let’s just rewind our memories back in time. At the beginning of everything. The past, where it all started. And it all started with a maths lesson, on a normal day. As these things do.
***

I hesitated, the pen hovering over the interactive whiteboard. Which equation was it? What was the point of finding out? I could feel the tears prickling at the backs of my eyes, and started to turn red with humiliation as the teacher sighed long-sufferingly. "Go on, Amelia. It's quite easy. Is it number one, resulting with a...." her voice droned on, going over the different possibilities. Ratios, fractions, percentages...this was useless. It was impossible. My hand had started to shake, as I heard the smans of the other Year Seven pupils echoing, the whispers and the pointing. I had never quite got used to it. My hand shook even more, and I dropped the electronic pen, its fall resounding with a clatter on the wooden floor. I turned red as a beetroot, and I felt the tears would come any second, what with the class exploding with wolf-whistles and calls of, "Yes, Amelia!” I leaned over to pick it up. Then swiped a hand across my cheeks to wipe my eyes, before I straightened again to face the board. Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic,I told myself until the tears stopped.
I stared blankly at the board. The numbers blurred. At random, I tapped the answer that looked the longest with the pen. Through the speaker vibrated this loud belching noise, and then a robotic voice saying, "Wrong!"
I winced. Give me blackboards any day.

At break, I trailed around listlessly as usual, imagining things in my head. It was the same dream as usual – a genie coming out of a bottle and granting me a wish. The first wish would usually be the obvious – grant me as many wishes as I want. The second – eliminate the glasses, mousey bob, chubbiness and sickly white skin. Then, make me the most popular girl in school, and...I broke off from my wishing game and looked up. Yes, where I normally was at the third wish. Halfway around the quad, at the shaded part where the benches were, and where Kirsty Brightman and her gang hung out. Oh no. I'd been spotted. Kirsty sidled up, the three Mini-K's following obediently : Rhiannon, Martine, and Lucy. I have always called them Mini-K's because they were faded versions of Kirsty, all little blank airheads obsessed with fashion and dieting, all 'disciples' of the Kirsty sisterhood. Please let her go away, please let her go away...
She didn't. Instead, Kirsty simpered in a fake baby voice, "Oooh! Melie-Sweet talks to herself." I winced at the familiar nickname. On my first day of Year Seven, my dad drove me to school. I begged him not to, but he did it anyway. Despite the fact that everybody else walked. After we reached the school, he whipped my door open for me. Planted a smack with his lips right on my head, then told me, “Have a great day, Melie-Sweet.” Ugh.
Kirsty told everyone about the name after hearing it, and it spread around Year Seven. Talk about making a good first impression! Every-one started to think I was odd, and I didn't make any friends. All because my dad was into calling me made-up names.
I suppose I forgave him, just because for me, he was the perfect dad, and could do no wrong. Oh, he wasn’t a dreamboat. Not fat, but with the start of a paunch; not bald, but with hair thinning round the temples. He wore embarrassing jumpers and loafers when he wasn’t in his formal suit that he wore to the office. But I still loved him with all my heart. We were always closer than mum and I were; he always made that extra effort. Lovely things, like surprise trips after school, sweet, funny notes in my lunchbox, pound coins hidden under my pillow. Mum tried as well, but she could see that she wasn’t going to equal up to Dad, whatever she did, so she stopped trying. Mum hated feeling inadequate, so she became kind of distant to me for a while. She provided and cared for me just like a mother should, but there was never anything more. I suppose it was my fault, and my loss. Though I didn’t realised it then. I was too caught up with Dad. Once he’d said, "I'd never leave you, Melia. I could never stay away from you that long." I'd asked him if that was a promise, and he'd said, "Yes. I promise," and we'd linked pinky fingers like we were little kids.

Getting snapped from my thoughts into the current situation, I turned red, as I always did near Kirsty and when I heard that nickname, and stammered, "Errr, no, I don't ever talk to myself, not never...I mean not ever. Um...no, not at all..."
"Oooh! No, not at all!" said Rhiannon, imitating my voice. A bit exaggeratedly if you ask me. I stood there and muttered something about having to leave, but Kirsty persisted.
"You know, Amelia Steptoe, I've just seen a pair of trousers in this catalogue that I think you'd really like. They're kind of loose, and billowy. I mean, they don't suit me but guess what the size is!”
“XXXL!” snorted Martine. “Know what that stands for? Extra extra extra large!”
I flinched and started reciting nursery rhymes in my head to keep myself from crying.
"No offence, Amelia!" Lucy called out, and they stood smaning until they grew bored of me just standing there with a red face and sidled off back to their bench, where they got a good view of the boys playing football. I continued my usual circle around the quad. Life was not good. But it was bearable because it was constant. Everything was normal to me, just a usual routine, like the wishing game. And everything would stay normal. At least, that's what I thought.

The bus stopped, and as a few pupils filed out, I felt a tap on my shoulder from someone on the seat behind. For the umpteenth time this journey.
It was Lucy. Again. I just ignored her – what would be the point of falling for it and turning round? She wouldn’t come up with anything particularly original, anyway, because Kirsty wasn’t there. Neither Kirsty or Rhiannon took the bus, it was only the dumbest pair of the foursome – Lucy and Martine.
Lucy said, in a very loud voice, to Martine, who was sitting next to her, “Martine? Do you like your food?”
“Oh,” sighed Martine, and I could see her in the window reflection, flicking back her fake blonde hair, in perfect Kirsty mimic, “Once in a while. Calories tend to freak me out though.”
Lucy leant back over the seat, so she was right in my face again. Turning to Martine, she said, “Hey Martine. Do you think she likes her food?”
They were killing themselves laughing; they were spluttering so much you would have thought they needed CPR. I gritted my teeth and bore it. It might not have been very witty, but it still hurt like a knife was being twisted around in my stomach. I couldn’t cry now though – not here, not now, not in front of everyone. I bit my lip as I always did when I was holding back tears - little imprints, two rows on each teeth, one from the braces and the other from my teeth. Blood would sometimes run down the corners of my mouth I bit so hard. My glasses fogged up in my attempt to keep my tears inside.

I got home, nearly in tears after surviving yet another episode of "Let's throw Amelia's jacket around the bus". There was worse in store for me. Much worse.
I waited a few minutes for Dad to come out – he was normally back from work by then, waiting for me, but I noticed his car wasn't parked, so I went in by myself. We lived in this shabby block of flats in a dead-end place called Drayton Road. This was quite embarrassing, but expected, because mum's waitressing job hardly earned us anything and dad's work as a copy-editor got us just enough to pay the bills. I always wished that we could own a house, like everyone else did, so I’d feel more confident about having friends round for parties and the like. Although, I wouldn’t really have had anyone to invite, anyway.
I mounted the stairs two at a time, escaping Mrs Brown, the ground floor resident, and her complaints about 'noisy feet clattering on the floor' and 'doors banging open and shut, open and shut'. Stuffy old bat. I wasn't in the least noisy.
The flat was silent and empty, and this scared me. I went into my tiny bedroom, and sat for a while on the windowsill, surrounded by what I like to call ‘creative mess’. This was because I fancied myself as a writer somewhat, and so adopted stereotypical traits of The Writer. This meant: messiness, absentmindedness, clutter, and disorder in general. My desk, which took up half the minuscule room, was cluttered with trinket boxes, snow globes, pen pots, stationery, clay animals and paper. Dad wouldn’t buy me a P.C, so an old and well-worn electric type-writer took on a rather supercilious air in the middle of the desk.
The windowsill was the place I liked to sit and get inspired whenever I had writer’s block, or just needed to escape for a while. I called it my dream-sill. It was extremely wide for such a small room, and long enough for me to sit with legs outstretched, although I preferred to sit curled up on one of the reed cushions. It was the perfect place for inspiration or escape because it overlooked not only the street but the opposite block of flats. You wouldn’t imagine the scenarios I had conjured up just by sitting there watching the windows. Behind every window lay a story; events happened behind them every day, leaving details to the imagination. With a vivid imaginations such as mine, this wasn’t hard. I’d already interpreted the baby’s scream and hushed voices from the top floor. The baby was a Russian prince, kidnapped from his native home by a couple of pirates. The pirates reformed, and settled down in England, adopting the baby. There’s a witch on the second floor, and on the ground floor resides a snake charmer. You could dream up anything by watching the windows.
And sometimes I’d spot Dad coming, and he’d spot me at my windowsill. He’d always pretend not to notice, and then I’d knock three times on the glass, whereupon he’d look up, feigning surprise, and mime climbing up the wall to the window. Whenever his car pulled up, the force of it made the silver wind chimes outside our house tinkle. He would always whistle softly, along with the wind chimes, and I would whistle back. Silly really, when I look back on it.

But Dad still wasn’t here, and neither was Mum. I felt a sickening panic attack coming on, so I sat down at my typewriter and wrote a few opening words to a story. I had no ideas though, and that didn’t go very far. So, to keep myself busy and my mind off worry, I went and paced around the house, nervously clicking my fingers. I didn't want to stay in the living room, with all the strange, modern paintings gaping silently at me, so I went into the kitchen, and sat at the crowded counter, rooting through homework for a moment. It was then that I saw a note clumsily pinned with blu-tack to the edge of the crockery shelf. I got up from the chair, and at the same time the note fell to the floor. It can’t have been very securely pinned, I thought. Whoever wrote it must have been in a hurry.
I bent down, and picked up the note. I read it out loud, crouched on the floor.
"Amelia,
Go to Sellyoak Hospital as soon as you read this."
It was in Dad's handwriting, big, slanted and bold.