فصل 24

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Nicky

So Jesss favorite saying next to “Its all going to be fine and “Well work something out and “Oh, Christ, Norman! is that families come in all different shapes and sizes. “Its not all two point three now, she says, like if she says it enough times well all have to actually believe it.

Well, if our family was a weird shape before, its pretty much insane now.

I dont really have a full-time mum, not like you probably have a mum, but it looks like Ive acquired another part-time version. Linzie. Linzie Fogarty. Im not sure what she makes of me I can see her watching me out of the corner of her eye, trying to work out if Im going to do something dark and Gothic or chew up a terrapin or something. Dad said shes somebody high up in the local council. He said it like he was really proud, like hes gone up in the world. Im not sure he ever looked at Jess the way he looks at her.

For about the first hour after we got here I just felt really awkward, like I basically just acquired one more place to feel like I didnt fit. The house is really tidy and they dont have any books, unlike ours, where Jess has stuffed them into pretty much every room except the bathroom and theres usually one by the loo anyway. And I kept staring at Dad because I couldnt believe hed been living here like a totally normal person while lying to us all the time. It made me hate her, like I hate him.

But then Tanzie said something at supper, and Linzie burst out laughing, and it was this really goofy, honking laugh—Foghorn Fogarty, I thought—and she clamped her hand over her mouth and she and Dad exchanged a look like it was a sound she should have tried really, really hard not to make. And something about the way her eyes wrinkled up made me think maybe she was okay.

I mean, her family has just taken on a weird shape, too. She had two kids, Suze and Josh, and Dad. And suddenly theres me—Gothboy, as Dad calls me, like thats funny—and Tanze, who has taken to wearing two pairs of glasses on top of each other because she says the one pair isnt quite right and Jess going nutso on her driveway, kicking holes in her car and Mr. Nicholls, who definitely has a thing about Mum, hanging around and calmly trying to sort everyone out like the only grown-up in the place. And no doubt Dad has had to tell her about my biological mum, who might also end up on her driveway one day, shouting like that first Christmas after I moved in with Jess when she threw bottles at our windows and screamed herself hoarse until the neighbors called the police. So all things considered, Foghorn Fogarty might honestly be feeling like her family isnt in quite the shape she expected, either.

I dont really know why Im telling you this. Its just that its three thirty a.m. and everyone else in this house is asleep and Im in Joshs room with Tanzie and he has his own computer—both of them have their own computers Macs, no less—and I cant remember his codes to do any gaming. But Ive been thinking about what Mr. Nicholls said about blogging and how somehow if you write it and put it out there, like that baseball audience in Field of Dreams, your people might just come.

You probably arent my people. Youre probably people who made a typo while doing a search on discount tires or porn or something. But Im putting it out here anyway. Just in case you happen to be anything like me.

Because this last twenty-four hours has made me see something. I might not fit in the way that you fit with your family, neatly, a little row of round pegs in perfectly round holes. In our family all our pegs and holes belonged somewhere else first, and theyre all sort of jammed in and a bit lopsided. But heres the thing. I dont know if its being away from everything, or how intense these last few days have been, but I realized something when Dad sat down and told me it was good to see me and his eyes got all moist my dad might be an arse, but hes my arse, and hes the only arse Ive got. And feeling the weight of Jesss hand as she sat by my hospital bed, or hearing her try not to cry on the phone at the thought of leaving me here, and watching my little sister, who is trying to be really, really brave about the whole school thing, even though I can tell that her world has basically ended—it all made me see that I do sort of belong somewhere.

I think I sort of belong to them.