My dad never got a chance to decide. He was driving home and went into the back of a lorry. That was that. They said he died instantly, but what does that matter? I know that if there was some way I could speak to him he’d tell me that he never wanted to die. That he wished he could be back with me and Mum. He didn’t have a choice, but Al did and all the feelings about my dad dying that I thought were gone are coming back cos of Al.
I force myself to stop looking at my phone and make my way downstairs. The lean-to is the only place in the house that feels like my dad even lived here cos all his junk is still piled up in there. Mum tried to clear it out a year after he died, but I kicked off and wouldn’t let her touch anything. I just kept screaming and shouting. I know this makes me sound proper weird, but there are only two places in the world where I feel safe. Where I don’t have to think about anyone else or anything. Where I don’t have to act a certain way, or pretend to like things that I really couldn’t give a toss about.
One of them is my dad’s lean-to and the other is the art classroom. Well, it was. Without Al, it’s just an empty room. So it turns out he was the reason I felt safe there. He just took me for who I was – sad, or miserable, or pissed off – and never expected anything more from me, y’know? And it was like I was a different person with him. I could talk about all the things I’m too scared to talk about in front of Tara and my other mates. Like the things I love, or what I want to do in the future, or the fact I secretly fucking hate house music even though everyone else seems to love it.
Al never made me feel stupid or weird. He never made me feel like I had to hide all these other parts of myself. He wanted to be my friend. Even though I let him down.
You see, after that day in art when we first talked, I bumped into Al at the museum. I’d gone there to do some sketching for my art portfolio and I saw him standing near these paper cranes. He looked . . . sad. Lonely even. So I went over to him and blurted out some stupid joke. Not just cos I felt sorry for him, but because I liked him. We started hanging around with each other more and more. I don’t remember how it happened, but we’d meet up after school, or sit together in art, or spend hours sending each other voice notes.
But it was only when no one else was around. It’s bad, but a part of me was embarrassed. Too embarrassed to let anyone know that Al was my mate. It’s not like we ever had that conversation or anything. It was just this unspoken thing between us. I was worried about what Tara and my other mates might say. Bothered about what people would think. How messed up is that? How pathetic is that?
Maybe, if I’d been braver, if I would’ve just not given a fuck about other people, if I’d been a better friend, then Al would still be here. It hurts so much.
I pull open the door to the lean-to and walk over to one of my dad’s old deckchairs. I sit down and put my feet up, bringing my knees close to my chest. It’s raining outside, and I turn to look out of the window, even though it’s proper dark outside so I can’t really see anything. I just sit there and listen to the sound of the rain hitting the roof. And I keep getting flashes. Flashes of me and Al. Flashes of my dad. It’s funny cos sometimes you think you’re over the worst of something, y’know? And I felt proud cos I thought I’d moved on like my dad would’ve wanted. I mean, I miss him, of course I do, but I’ve got to a stage where I can enjoy stuff. My dad’s gone, but it doesn’t rip through me the way it used to.
But now, with Al, it’s like losing my dad all over again. Another person I’ll never see again and having all these things I want to say. All these feelings that I don’t know what to do with. I feel the tears coming and I press my head against my knees. I hope Al knows that I never meant to hurt him. How sorry I am for not being more like him. I cry till I can’t any more. Till my eyes are puffy and my leggings are drenched in tears and snot.
I lift my head up, and think about this painting that Al was doing in art. He smudged these green and blue pastels with his fingers and told me all about this city that managed to just disappear underwater. And I remember how I’d thought things can’t just vanish. Cos even if you can’t see them they’re still there. They always will be. Like losing my dad. And now Al.
I pull my phone out of my jacket pocket, and I go on to Al’s Insta. There are loads of videos and photos on there. Stuff that I’d only glanced at when he’d been alive. There’s this one video he’d taken at night, in the centre of Civic. It was this concrete square in the middle of all these shops, with just a few benches, near the big Asda. Al had filmed the sky and all these fireworks going off. It hadn’t been Bonfire Night or anything – maybe someone in the flats round the back had just been having a party. Al had filmed all the colours exploding, then bleeding into the night. He’d managed to make something so ordinary look so . . . special. It was just like his art. Where he drew things in a way that you’d never seen or thought about before, as if you were wearing special glasses.
I scroll through more of his pictures. Photos of paintings he’d done of Wythenshawe, and other random photos he’d taken around town or the estate, and they are all proper good. Like he was able to see through all the crap and find something beautiful. People are always saying how much of a dump Wythenshawe is. That it’s chavvy or proper rough and how you can’t even go to the shops for milk without getting stabbed. Which is a load of rubbish! Al would always say that, if anything, he felt lucky to be from one of the ‘biggest council estates in Europe’ cos it also had so much history. Looking at his Insta makes me think that maybe I’d taken it for granted. Cos Al was able to look closely and find all this good stuff and capture it. People only ever talk about the bad things that happen around here. No one ever talks about how green it is, or how people look out for each other, how everyone on our estate helped us pay for Dad’s funeral. How our house had been full of flowers and food.
I move further down in my chair and I can’t help but smile a little bit. Cos Al might be gone, but his paintings aren’t and neither is his way of looking at the world. And, whether he knew it or not, he can’t just vanish. He was too special. He was too . . . Al.
I still remember the first time I saw the paper cranes in the Manchester Museum. I’d gone there to sketch one of the mummies, and I’d stumbled across the cabinet by mistake. It was full of all these tiny paper birds that looked like they were about to take off. I’d never seen anything like it before. And for some reason, just standing there among all those tiny birds, made me forget. Just being in that museum made me feel free.
I close my bedroom door and pick up my phone. There’s another message from Kyle:
Yo, wen u bk at skl?
I ignore it and open Facebook instead.
Mum was right. I do need to do summat useful . . . I don’t care about school, tho. I wanna figure out wot was going through Al’s head. Find out wot he was doing . . . where he was . . . wot he was thinking . . . before he died. Saul’s wrong – there had to be a reason. Someone or summat that pushed Al over the edge. I can’t just sit around doing nothing. Not when our whole family’s been torn apart.
Fuck that.
I go to my profile, then watch as my news feed updates. I’ve not been on Facebook since it happened.