Slam (17 page)

Mum woke me
up by banging on my bedroom door. I knew I was in trouble when I started looking around for something to wear. I picked my jeans off the floor, then went to get a shirt out of my wardrobe and found a load of stuff I hadn't seen before—Hawk cargo pants and a couple of cool Hawk T-shirts that I'd wanted for a while, that one with the Hawk emblem, and the other one with the Hawk logo in flames. I knew it was the future straightaway. And the first thing I noticed about the future was that I wasn't living at Alicia's place. I put on the burning Hawk T-shirt and went out into the kitchen.

Mark was there with a baby. It looked like a girl. And she wasn't a tiny baby. She was sitting up in a baby seat and eating what looked like mashed-up Weetabix with a spoon.

“Here he is,” said Mark. “Here's your big brother.”

I was prepared. I knew who she was, and where I was, and everything like that. I'd been in the future before. But when Mark said that, I felt quite emotional. I was a big brother. She was my little sister. I'd been an only child all my life, and suddenly there was this new person. And she liked me too. She started smiling and then opened her arms like she wanted me to pick her up. I went over to her.

“She hasn't finished yet,” said Mark.

He didn't know it was a big deal for me to meet my sister. He probably saw me last night and I probably saw her last night and for Mark this was just a tiny moment, one of a million tiny moments. Not for me, though. This wasn't a tiny moment at all.

It was different, meeting this baby. Meeting Roof had been a shock, in a lot of ways. I didn't know about being whizzed then, so that was a shock. And I didn't know for sure that Alicia was pregnant, so meeting your own son even before you were a hundred percent that your girlfriend or even ex-girlfriend was going to have a baby…that would be a shock for anyone. Plus, I didn't know what I felt about having a son. Or rather, I did know how I felt, and how I felt was bad. But this baby wasn't my baby, she was my little sister, and nothing about her was going to make me feel sad or worried.

I wanted to know her name.

“Come on, dumpling. Eat up. Daddy's got to go to work.”

“Where's Mum?”

I suddenly remembered that kid at school who didn't know anyone he lived with. Maybe Mum had gone, and I lived with Mark and a baby whose name I didn't know.

“She's in bed. This one was up half the night.”

“Roof.” “This one.” “Dumpling.” Why didn't people ever call babies their real names?

“Is she all right?” I said.

“Yeah. Fine. Just a menace.”

“Can I feed her?”

Mark looked at me. I guessed that I didn't offer to do things like that very often.

“Course. You got time?”

I remembered now the thing I hated most about the future, apart from being scared that I'd never get back to my own time. In the future, you never knew what you were supposed to be doing when.

I shrugged.

“What you got on?”

I shrugged again.

“College? Roof?”

He was still called Roof, then. He seemed to be stuck with it.

“The usual,” I said.

“So you haven't got time.”

“Will I see her later?” I said.

“She'll be here,” said Mark. “She lives here.”

“And so do I,” I said.

It was more of a question, really, but he didn't know that.

“You've woken up sharp,” said Mark. “If you already know where you live, there'll be no stopping you today.”

I smiled, to show I knew he was joking. There wasn't much else I knew.

Mum came into the kitchen in her dressing gown, looking sleepy, and older, and fatter. I'm sorry if that sounds rude, but it's the truth. She walked over and kissed the baby on the top of her head. The baby didn't seem that bothered.

“Everything OK?”

“Yeah,” said Mark. “Sam just offered to feed her.”

“Blimey,” said Mum. “Are you broke again?”

I felt in my pockets. There was a note in there.

“No, I think I'm all right.”

“I was being sarcastic.”

“Oh.”

“Have you woken up daft?”

“Mark just said I'd woken up sharp.”

“I was being sarcastic too,” said Mark.

I hated being like this. It seemed to me that if TH was going to whiz me into the future, he should at least sit me down and tell me some things first. Like where I went to college, and what my sister's name was. Basic stuff. If you're sitting in a room with your sister and you don't know her name, you feel stupid, even if she is only a baby.

“That's your mobile,” said Mum.

I listened. All I could hear was a cow mooing.

“That's just a cow,” I said.

“Yeah, that was hilarious the first time,” said Mum.

I listened again. It really sounded like a cow. Except the mooing went, “Moo moo, moo moo…. Moo moo, moo moo….” Like a telephone. It wasn't a real cow, because what would a real cow be doing in my bedroom? I could see what had happened. What had happened was, I had downloaded a ringing tone that sounded like a cow, sometime between the present and the future, for a laugh. I wasn't sure how funny it really was.

 

I found my phone in my jacket pocket.

“Hello?”

“It's Bee.”

“Oh. Hello, Bee.” I wasn't sure who Bee was, but it sounded a bit like Alicia. You couldn't be sure of anything, though, when you were in the future.

“Bee. Not Bee.”

“Bee not Bee? What does that mean?”

“It's Alicia. And I've got a cold. So I'm trying to say, you know, ‘It's Alicia,' except I'm saying ‘It's Bee,' and it comes out as ‘It's Bee.'”

“Me.”

“Yes. Bloody hell. Have you woken up stupid?”

“Yes.” It just seemed easier to admit it.

“Anyway. I know you were supposed to be going to college, but I'm really not well, and Mum and Dad aren't around, and I was going to take him for his jab this morning. So can you do it?”

“Jab?”

“Yes. His thingy. Inoculation. Immunization. Injection.”

That sounded like a lot of stuff for a little kid.

“Anyway. Can you do it?”

“Me?”

“Yes. You. His father. We can't put it off again.”

“Where is it?”

“The Health Center. Up the road.”

“OK.”

“Really? Thanks. I'll see you in a bit. He needs to get out somewhere. He's been up for hours and he's doing my head in.”

My mum had taken over the feeding now. The baby smiled and stretched out her arms to me again, but Mum told her she had to wait.

“How old are kids when they have their jab?”

“What jab?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, it depends what jab, doesn't it?”

“Does it?”

“Are you talking about Roof?”

“Yeah. Alicia said she wanted to take him for his jab now. He should have had it months ago, but she wasn't sure. So how old are they normally?” I was trying to find out how old my son was. And also how old I was.

“Fifteen months?”

“Right.”

So Roof was a few months older than fifteen months. Fifteen months was a year and three months. He might be nearly two, or more than two, even. So I was eighteen. I was going to buy a paper on the way to Alicia's so I could see the date, and then I'd know whether I could drink in a pub legally.

“I've got to take him this morning. Alicia's not well.”

“Do you want me and Emily to come with you?”

“Emily?”

“What, you want me to leave her here?”

“No, no. Just…Anyway,” I said. “No. You're all right. I'll take him to the swings or something.”

Kids of nearly or just over two could go on swings, couldn't they? That's who those little swings were for, wasn't it? What else could a two-year-old do? I didn't have a clue.

“Mum. Is Roof good at talking? In your opinion?”

“He could talk for England.”

“That's what I thought.”

“Why? Has someone said something?”

“No, no. But…”

But I didn't know whether he could talk, or two-year-olds could talk, or anything. And I couldn't tell her that either.

“I'll see you later,” I said. “See you, Emily.”

And I kissed my baby sister on the head. She cried when I left.

 

Alicia looked terrible. She was in a dressing gown, and her eyes were streaming, and her nose was red. It was quite good, really, because I was getting the impression that we weren't together anymore, what with me living back at home and so on, and I was sad. Back in the present, we'd been getting on OK, and I was starting to fancy her again, just like I did when we first met. Her looking like this…it made the breakup easier.

“I've actually got a cold,” she said, and laughed. I looked at her. I didn't know what she was talking about.

“Maybe I caught it off you,” she said, and laughed again. I was worried that she'd had some kind of nervous breakdown.

“He's watching TV,” she said. “I haven't had the energy to do anything else with him.”

I walked into the living room, and there was this little blond boy with long curly hair like a girl, watching some Australian people singing with a dinosaur. He turned round and saw me, then came running at me, and I had to catch him or he would have smashed his face against the coffee table.

“Dadda!” he said, and I swear, my heart stopped beating for a couple of seconds. Dadda. It was all too much, meeting my sister and my son all on the same day. It would be too much for anybody. I'd met him before, last time I'd visited the future, but he wasn't much, then, and I'd hardly gone anywhere near him. He'd done my head in last time. He was doing my head in now, but in a good way.

I swung him round for a bit, and he laughed, and when I'd stopped swinging him, I had a look at him.

“What?” said Alicia.

“Nothing. Just looking.”

He looked like his mum, I thought. Same eyes and mouth.

“I can have a ice cream if I'm a good boy.”

“Is that right?”

“After the doctor.”

“OK. And then we'll go on the swings.”

Roof started crying, and Alicia looked at me as if I was an idiot.

“You don't have to go on the swings,” she said.

“No,” I said. “Not if you don't want to.”

I didn't have a clue what that was all about, but I could tell I'd made a mess of something.

“Did you just forget?” Alicia hissed at me.

“Yeah,” I said. “Sorry.”

You really need to live your life, and not just zoom in and out of it. Otherwise you never know what's going on.

“Anyway. Just keep him for as long as you can. I feel terrible.”

 

We put Roof in the buggy to go to the Health Center, except of course I couldn't do the straps up, so Alicia had to help me, but she didn't seem surprised at how useless I was. She asked me when I was going to learn how to do it. I was quite pleased to realize that I was usually useless, because then I didn't have to explain why I could do it one day and not the next. When we got out of the house, though, he started kicking up a fuss and trying to wriggle out. I knew he could walk, because I'd seen him run across the room when he jumped at me, so I fiddled around with the straps until something clicked, and let him run up the street. Then I realized he was going to charge straight into the road, so I had to catch him up and stop him. After that I made sure I was holding his hand.

My mum was right. He could have talked for Brazil, let alone England. Everything we passed, he said, “Look at that, Dadda!” And half the time you couldn't see what the hell he was talking about. Sometimes it was a motorbike or a police car; sometimes it was a twig or an old Coke can. At first I tried to think of something to say about these things, but what is there to say about a Coke can? Nothing much.

 

There were loads of people in the Health Center. A lot of the people in there were parents with sick-looking kids, kids with coughs, kids with a fever, kids who were just slumped over their mothers' shoulders. I was glad Roof wasn't sick like that. I'm not sure I could have handled it. I waited at the reception desk while Roof went off to look through a box of toys in the waiting area.

“Hello,” said the woman behind the desk.

“Hello,” I said. “We've come for the inoculation and jab and immunization.”

The woman laughed. “Probably just one of them today, eh?”

“If that's OK,” I said.

“Who's ‘we,' anyway?”

“Oh,” I said. “Sorry. Him.” I pointed at Roof.

“Right. And who's he?”

Oh, bloody hell, I thought. I don't really know my kid's name. I was sure I wasn't the best dad in the world, but the feeling I'd got from Alicia and Roof when I went to pick him up was that I wasn't the worst either. Not knowing your kid's name, though…that wasn't good. Even the worst dad in the world knows his kid's name, which made me worse than the worst dad in the world.

If Roof was his name, then his initial was “R.” And his second name was either my second name or Alicia's second name. So it was either Jones or Burns.

“R. Jones,” I said.

She looked on a list, and then looked on a computer screen.

“Nothing here for that name,” I said.

“R. Burns,” I said.

“May I ask who you are?”

“I'm his dad,” I said.

“But you don't know his name?”

“Yeah,” I said. “No.”

She looked at me. She obviously didn't think that was a good enough explanation.

“I forgot we used his mum's second name,” I said.

“First name?”

“I call him Roof,” I said.