All the Small Things (part 10)

[first_spike]

Friday, late morning

Harry rinsed the last of the shampoo from his hair and face and turned so the water played on his shoulders. That feels so good. One day, I am going to buy whoever invented the hot shower a very large drink.

This doesn't add up. At school, the vomiting was casual, like rinsing before you brush your teeth. So creepy.

Dougie fought it, and got a thrashing. Do that every day, he'd be dead.

And he really did get stuck into breakfast. Every mouthful, every swallow, no excuses, no sneaking his food onto another plate. Everything was fine right up to Fletch's phone call.

Harry turned off the water and let it drain from his body. What are we missing?

He reached for his towel. His wrist twinged. He raised his hand, flexed it, rotated it, shrugged.

He dried his body, wrapped the towel around his waist and made his way to his room. He dressed, sat on the bed and rubbed the back of his head with the damp towel. Then he saw the newspaper clipping lying beside him where Tom had left it.

“What are you looking at?” Harry swiped his hand across the photograph, then leaned forward, felt around on the floor, and picked something up.

It was a notebook, a thick one. Its hard blue cover was scuffed and faded, coloured in here and there with ballpoint ink. As he set it down on the bed, it fell open to a page halfway through. Harry traced the writing there with his finger, shook his head, then dropped the clipping onto it and snapped the book shut. He slipped it back under his bed, stood and headed for the door.

As he passed his dresser, he stopped, flipped through his stack of DVDs for a moment, pulled one out, then went into the corridor. As he passed Doug's room, he put his head around the half-open door.

“Dougie? I'm going to watch a film. Downstairs, five minutes?”

Doug lay on his bed, curled up with his back to the door. He shook his head.

“Come on, keep me company.” Harry backed out of the room.

“You'll like it,” he called as he started down the stairs. “There's a Ferrari, a hot tub, and a bee-yoo-tiful girl.”

Harry set everything down on the coffee table: two mugs of tea and a plate of ham and cheese sandwiches. He slotted the disc into the player, looked around the room, then began searching the furniture. He eventually found the remote on the table under the remains of last week's NME. He sat down, aimed it at the TV.

Doug appeared at the doorway.

“Hey.” Harry patted the seat beside him, and pointed at one of the mugs. “That's yours. Help yourself to the sarnies.”

The titles came on screen. Doug shuffled across the carpet and sat down. Harry looked across. “Seen this one?”

Doug shook his head. Harry sat back in the sofa, sipping his tea and watching him out of the corner of his eye. On screen, a dark-haired boy lay in bed, hamming up a phony illness. Doug giggled as the parents fell for it, laughed out loud when the boy's sister stamped her foot and huffed from the room. Harry began to relax.

A few minutes later, a teacher droned and his Economics class sank into the furthest reaches of school hell. Doug picked up a sandwich, took a bite, then wolfed it and reached for another. Harry took one for himself and eased back in the chair.

The film's truant hero stood in the foyer of a posh restaurant, facing down the head waiter, ignoring the pleas of his two friends to leave it and find somewhere else. He snatched at the phone on the wall and punched at the buttons.

Harry jumped, rolled his eyes and muttered. He reached into his pocket.

“Hi Tom… Yeah, fine, we're watching a DVD… Ferris Bueller.” He chuckled. “I thought so too… OK, cheers.”

Harry put his phone on the table. “We're on in a few minutes.”

Doug sighed.

“It'll be fine,” Harry said. “Want any more to eat?”

Doug shook his head. Harry went through to the kitchen anyway and brought back a couple of bottles of water.

The characters on screen finished their meal and moved on to a baseball game. The phone began a jig across the table. Harry chased it with one hand and stopped the DVD with the other. Doug pulled up his legs and scrunched into the corner of the sofa.

“Hello! Oops…” Harry put down the remote and swapped hands with the phone. “Hi Tom… OK, put them on.”

He thumbed a few buttons, then a girl's voice spoke from between his fingers.

“H-hello?”

“Hi! I'm Harry. Who's that?”

“L-laura.”

“And I'm Amy.”

“Hi Laura, hi Amy. Is there anyone else?”

“No. Just Laura's mum. She's talking to Danny about someone called Bruce.”

Harry chuckled. ”Can you hear us OK?”

“Y-yes.”

Harry waved Doug to come closer, but he retreated deeper into the cushions.

“We're really sorry we couldn't be there to see you. Dougie and I have a tummy bug and we didn't want you to get it.“ Harry slid along the sofa until he was next to Doug and nudged him. “Say hello, Dougie.”

“Er… Hello, Dougie.”

Amy and Laura giggled.

Harry laughed. “You'll have to excuse him. He's a bit poorly. He's been in the loo all morning.”

“Awwww,” they chorused. Doug glowered. Harry just winked, put an arm around his shoulders, and pulled him closer to the phone.

“Having a good day? What have you done? Has Danny broken anything yet?”

Doug listened to them talk and slowly unfolded. His eyelids began to droop, and his head tilted onto Harry's shoulder.

A few minutes later, Laura was some way into a complicated story about why her horse was named Charlie. Harry was gazing into nowhere, saying uh-huh when he remembered to, and trying to touch his nose with his bottom lip.

Doug raised his head, rubbed his cheek and blinked. He stared at Harry for a moment, started to laugh, and coughed to cover it up. Harry looked round, lowered his lip and grinned, then launched into a range of faces.

Doug coughed harder, and started to turn purple.

“A-are you all right?” Laura asked. “That's a really b-bad cough.”

“He's nodding.” Harry crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue. “That only works on TV, Dougie."

“Oh, aw… We have to go now,” Amy said. “Hope you're better soon.”

“G-get well soon.”

“Uh, we're a lot better now we've talked to you,” Doug said.

Harry squeezed Doug's shoulder. “We sure are.”

There was a chorus of goodbyes, then rustling. Tom's voice crackled through the speaker. “Thanks, guys.”

“They were fun,” Harry said. “I thought there was going to be lots of them.”

“Yeah. Long story.”

“You about done?”

“I wish. They still want photos. I don't know what they're going to do about you guys, but that's not my problem. Looks like we'll be a couple of hours at least.”

“OK. Nil carborundum. Later.”

“Cheers. Bye Harry. Bye Dougie.”

Harry closed his phone and slid it back in his pocket. Doug sat forward, resting his elbows on his thighs.

“Nil what?”

“Nil? Oh, it's Latin. 'Nil carborundum illegitimi.' Don't let the bastards wear you down. Some archaeologist found it carved on a statue in Rome, or something.”

Doug narrowed his eyes, then sat back.

“How do you do that?”

“Do what?” Harry picked up one of the water bottles.

“Just talk to people like that. You make it sound so easy.”

“You were fine.”

“I was crap.”

“Look… you made them laugh at the beginning, even if it was one of the oldest jokes in the book, and you left them feeling good at the end. They won't remember a thing I said, but they'll remember you.”

He looked at the TV. “You want something else to eat?”

You're still here? It's over. Go home. Go.

The screen faded to black. Harry sat up and pointed the remote at the TV.

Doug shook his head. “I can't believe they killed the car.”

“You liked it?”

“Yeah, good one.” A dreamy smile crept onto his face. “Sloane was nice.”

“You do know she's old enough to be your mother?”

Doug's nose wrinkled, then he smirked. “So I'll be her toy-boy.” He stretched. “Ed Rooney… Hey, come on down and kiss my big old ass…” He grinned and started singing, “Pucker up, pucker up, buttercup.”

Harry joined in. “Pucker up, buttercup, don't break my heart.” He threw back his head and howled.

“I knew there was a reason we don't let you sing.”

“I'll have you know this voice is the result of years of professional training.”

“Yeah, from Danny's dad. Harry, sit. Harry, roll over. Harry, sing!”

“Woof.”

They looked at each other. Smiles turned to giggles, giggles to chuckles, and chuckles to fits of laughter. Harry slid off the chair onto the floor, Doug toppled over and curled up on the cushions.

“Ow.” He pulled his arms into his chest. “I'm killing myself here.”

Harry stopped. He sat back against the sofa.

“Aw, no…” Doug slid down beside him.

“It's fine, Dougie. Forget about it.”

Doug turned his head. “So you're all right, are you?”

Harry drew his legs up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, tilted his head back and glared at the ceiling. Doug watched the pulse flicker on his throat.

“Angry,” Harry said at last. “At him. At the school. Everything was supposed to be, it was like they had this picture, and anything that didn't fit…”

His voice rose. “They even fucking told me I saved his life. Everything was going to be all right, they said. Next thing, I'm reading about his inquest. Inquests take ages, Dougie. They knew, they must have known.”

Harry drew his knees in tighter. His head sank forward. “And me. I went along with it. I could see he was in trouble and I…”

He closed his eyes.

Doug folded his legs and picked at his knee. His voice began to feel its way through his words. “You did… save his life, though. That wasn't a lie. You gave him… He threw it away. Him, not you. You tried… He only told you he was OK because you asked, kept asking.”

Harry turned his head a little. Doug knitted his fingers together.

“Like with that old guy… football guy, Danny would know. He drank, his liver turned to shit. So they gave him a new… a transplant. First thing he did? Got pissed, went for a drive. A lot of people said, what a waste. But the transplant doctor… gave him the chance anyway. He must have thought, hoped the guy would sort himself out. Maybe he will.“

Doug cleared his throat and studied his hands.

“The toys, the ones fans give us. I don't know what they think, when they… the big ones, you know how much they cost? I mean, it's nice of them, but we don't want stuffed toys. Well, maybe Tom. So now some kids in hospital, they have something, at night, when they're scared.

“It's like, you can only give someone something. Then it's up to them.”

He struggled to his feet.

“Gotta do something,” he mumbled.

Harry sat on the floor, head tilted back on the sofa cushion, watching a spot of reflected sunlight inch across the dimples on the plaster ceiling. It shimmered and stretched as it neared the corner of the room, then faded to nothing.

He lifted his head, puffed through his nose, and nodded. He rose to his feet, stretching and shaking each limb in turn, then crossed the room to the DVD player. He'd just clicked the disc into its case when a key turned in the front door.

“Hi honey, I'm home.” Danny's voice ran through the front door and around the house, chased by a laugh.

“Hello, dear,” Harry answered in his best wife-and-mother voice. He leaned into the hallway. “Did you have a nice day at work?”

“Oh my God. You would not believe it. It was so fucking degrad-”

“Tom is Superman!” Danny lifted his arm above his head. “To infinity, and beyond.” He leapt skyward; his knuckles just missed the ceiling. He crouched, spun round, and aimed both arms at Harry.

“I'm Spiderman.” He flicked back his hands. “Whoosh! Caught you in my radioactive web. Ha ha!”

“It was bad. You were lucky. Really lucky.” Tom watched Danny swing from web to web down the hallway. “Guess who was supposed to be Batman and Robin.”

He shook his head. “I so need a drink. How's Dougie?”

⇐ Part 9 - Part 11 ⇒