Stonebird (4 page)

Over the next few days, I can't take my mind off the homework.

I've got to have something to say. Otherwise I'll just be sitting there holding the egg like before, feeling the eyes of the whole class tearing into me.

And that means trying to talk to Grandma.

My heart pops and flutters down into my stomach. Grandma's voice rings in my ears screaming,
I'LL KILL YOU! I'VE KILLED BEFORE!
I close my eyes to try to get rid of it, but then I see her face, snarling and white.

I breathe slowly, in and out, in and out.

It wasn't her
, I tell myself.
It was the demon
.

But it doesn't make me feel any better.

Mom says we should always stick to simple subjects when we're with Grandma. Things like the weather and the color of the flowers, because they're easy to understand.

The War is not a simple subject. What if remembering it makes her go crazy again?

But there's no one else I can ask. I don't know any of our new neighbors. I suppose I could try asking one of the other people in the retirement home, but if the demon's in them too, then they won't be much help.

Then I have a thought . . . if it
was
during the War that Grandma killed someone, maybe asking her is the best way to find out. The homework will give me a chance to talk to her about it without Mom getting weirded out.

“Don't worry about it,” Mom says, when I mention it to her. “Her long-term memory's often better than her short-term memory.” I don't know what that means, so I don't say anything.

On Saturday, Jess is out with her new friends, so Mom and I visit Grandma without her. Grandma's asleep when we get there. I think we'll probably have to go home, because Mom always says it's important for her to rest. But after a moment her eyes flicker open. She looks up at the ceiling, then looks around the room and finally looks at us.

Mom says, “Hi, Mommy,” in this really quiet voice that sounds weird coming from her.

Grandma frowns slightly, and I can tell she doesn't recognize us.

“I've brought Liam to see you again.” Mom moves closer, leaning in. “Jess is busy today, I'm afraid, but we thought we'd pop in anyway. How are you? How are you doing?”

“Sue,” Grandma says, her eyes shining as she smiles. “My dear Sue.”

She reaches out a thin, wrinkly hand and clutches Mom's arm.

They hold hands for a while, then I step forward and kiss Grandma's cheek. She smiles, and her face stretches, and the skin pulls tight over her bones, and I know it's bad, but I keep thinking she looks like a skeleton.

“How are you, Robert?” she says.

It used to make me feel sad when she called me by Dad's name, but I'm used to it now. I glance across at Mom, but even she looks okay.

“It's Liam,” Mom says. “He's just had his first week at his new school.”

“Oh, is that right?” Grandma says. Her eyes move from me to Mom and back, then she starts picking at her mouth with a long finger. “Well, I don't know, nurse. I don't know.”

You know how sometimes things can get so awkward that you don't know where to look? Like when you're daydreaming in class and you snap out of it to realize everyone's staring at you, so you spend the next hour avoiding eye contact?

That's how I'm feeling now.

In the sad silence that follows, I glance around the room. That's when I notice the flowers on the windowsill. The ones from us are still there, and so are the ones from the nurses, but there are some new ones that weren't here last time.

I move over to the window to get a better look. There's a note on them that says:
Thank you for believing in me
. That's weird. Who else has been visiting her?

“Liam's in fifth grade now, aren't you, Liam?” Mom says.

I know she's just trying to hammer it home. That's the other thing you have to do with Grandma: if you repeat things over and over again, sometimes they sink in.

Grandma blinks. It's one of her bad days.

Which means I won't be able to ask her anything after all.

Then something changes. Her eyes rim with tears.

“Oh, Sue, they grow up so fast, don't they?”

“They do,” Mom says. Her face relaxes, and I can feel the relief flooding out of her.

“How old are you now, dear?”

“Eleven,” I say.

Grandma smiles and turns to look out of the window. “A fine age.”

“Liam actually has some homework he was hoping you could help with,” Mom says. She nudges my arm and nods in encouragement.

Here we go.

“What's that, nurse?” Grandma says.

And just like that she's gone again. Mom smiles, but I can tell it's hard for her. She rubs the back of Grandma's hand. “I was just saying Liam's got some homework he was hoping you could help with.”

“Oh?” She turns to face me again. “And how old are you now, dear?”

“Eleven,” I say.

“Ah, a fine age.”

Mom gives me a look as if to say,
Go ahead
, so I clear my throat and say, “Grandma, I was wondering if you could tell me about the War.”

“The what?” she says.

“The War,” I say slowly. “I was just wondering if you can remember what it was like living through it?”

Her eyes don't move from mine. Her mouth hangs open, and she's so still that I start to think something's wrong. I glance quickly at Mom, but she's just sitting there.

“Oh, nurse,” Grandma says.

Mom squeezes her hand again, but it doesn't do any good because Grandma's wailing now, wailing so loud I can feel it cutting into my stomach as it clenches tight.

I try to swallow, but my throat has dried up. I've got so much more to ask, but I can't. Grandma wails until her eyes close, and the noise finally softens and stops.

She's asleep. Mom lets out a long sigh.

She looks so peaceful when she's asleep.

“Sorry, dear,” Mom says. “Maybe we can try again another day.”

We walk back down the corridor. A woman in a blue-and-white uniform is wheeling a trolley of food to each room. It looks like the same stuff we get at school: powdered mash and horrible-looking meat, but it still smells nice and makes my tummy rumble.

When we get to the car, Mom turns away to try to hide the tears that are trickling down her cheeks.

“She doesn't really think you're a nurse,” I say.

Mom smiles at that and laughs a tiny laugh. “I know. I know.”

“Mom?”

“Yes, dear?”

“Have you ever seen anyone else visiting Grandma?”

“Why do you ask?” she says.

“The flowers. On the windowsill.”

“Oh, yes, I was wondering about those too. I haven't seen anyone myself, but I wouldn't be surprised. Grandma's lived around here for a long time. She taught at your school for thirty-odd years. She'll have impacted a lot of lives, your grandma.”

She's quiet after that.

To fill the silence, I go through my options for the War homework in my head.

I guess I could just lie and say I forgot about it.

In my old school I lied to teachers all the time. Not big lies, just little fibs, like when they caught me whispering and they'd say,
Liam, are you talking?
and I'd say,
No
. Lies don't feel like lies when you're in school, because if you tell the truth you get in trouble.

But I think if Mrs. Culpepper caught me whispering and said,
Liam, are you talking?
I would say,
Yes, sorry, Miss
, because some people you just can't lie to, and Mrs. Culpepper feels like one of those people.

I'm going to be in Big Trouble. I know it.

Then I remember Grandma's diary.

It might be hard to find out if she's a killer, but it'll be easy to find out about the War. The entry with the planes was one of the earliest ones in there. It won't exactly be an interview, but I'm sure I'll be able to make a story.

As soon as we get back, I rush up to my room and dig out the diary.

There are a few blank pages after the one with the planes, but then I find the next entry:

Paris?

I didn't know Grandma used to live in Paris!

And all this time I thought we had nothing in common because she has never had a cell phone and doesn't know what the Internet is, and she likes classical music and awful books, and I like PlayStations and stories about knights and wizards and dragons.

But we both had to move house at nearly the same age, and we both left friends behind.

It sounds as if she really loved Paris. If I had to leave a place I loved like that, I think I'd go home as soon as the War finished. There must be something about Swanbury that she loved even more than France.

Thinking that makes a rotten feeling seep into my stomach.

I can't believe I wanted Mom to move Grandma closer to Colchester. I know it's really lame that I can't see Sam and Dave every day and go around their houses to play video games after school or soccer down the rec, but it would have been worse for Grandma to move. The only difference is she wouldn't be able to moan about it because she'd forget right away.

After that list, the diary entry cuts off, but over the page there's another one:

I quickly turn the page to see if she's drawn the gargoyle, but instead there's just a picture of some rock.

The ink has smudged. The paper is wavy where it's got wet and then dried.

I'm about to read the next entry when Mom calls up: “Liam, can you come help me with this, please?”

So I slide the diary back under the bed, careful not to damage the cover. Then I head downstairs and find her in the hall with a huge box in her arms.

“Wedding photos,” she says. “Thought I'd put them in the cellar.”

I open the door for her and help her down the narrow stairs. It's only when we come back up that I can see she's been crying again.

“Thank you, dear,” she says.

Then she goes into the kitchen and takes a bottle of wine from the fridge. And that's when I realize that wine o'clock is not like bedtime or lunchtime or home time, because those times don't change. But wine o'clock changes all the time.

Later that night I search for “Paris in World War II” on the Internet, and here's what comes up:

That's because the Germans took over and set up camp in France and took all their food and used their money, and no one was allowed out at night. Imagine if Grandma hadn't left! She might be dead too, and then there would be no Mom, and there would be no Jess and no me.

I think about the noise of all those planes flying overhead and the sirens ripping through the air. I think about
the gargoyle disappearing from the roof of the cathedral, and it comes to me.

An idea. A story.

On Monday I take Grandma's diary to school so I don't forget any of the details. I keep it in my drawer through the morning, and then after lunch Mrs. Culpepper stands at the head of the class and claps her hands for silence.

She takes a pen and goes to the board and writes:

“Right,” she says, turning to face us again. “I hope you're all ready.” A murmur runs around the class, and Mrs. Culpepper smiles. “Okay, then. Let's form a circle, shall we?”

As everyone's getting up, I rush over to my drawer and have one last quick look at the diary. Then I take my place on the floor. Some people are looking nervous and some are looking bored, and Matt and his friends are staring at me, but I ignore them. My knees are shaking up and down, up and down. I try to stop, but they just start again.

“How did you find the homework?” Mrs. Culpepper says, sitting on the floor with us.

Everyone speaks up at once, trying to make their voice heard.

“It was really fun!”

“My great-granddad is awesome!”

“I'm pleased to hear it,” Mrs. Culpepper says. Then she holds up her hand, and inside it is the egg. The voices die
down until there's quiet. “Now, remember,” she says, “no talking unless you're holding the egg. Okay? Who would like to go first?”

We go around the circle, and people tell stories about Spitfires and making guns and clearing mines. Stories about setting up hospitals inside tents right next to the battle and packing everything up and moving it along every time the army changed its position.

Suddenly I'm worried that my story isn't good enough.

It's not like we're getting marked or anything, but everyone else has something superexciting to say and theirs have all been real. I haven't even practiced.

The egg gets closer and closer. Then it's my turn.

I take it, and the warmth seeps into my hands. The words bubble in my mind.

This is a story about how I nearly didn't exist
, I say.

And just like that, they're hooked. Their eyes are on me, but there's no laughter, no smirks, just interested faces and a silence so heavy I know all they want me to do is say what happens next.

It starts in Paris.

Every night the sky was alive with planes, bombers flying to and from Germany and fighters in the air beside them.

My grandma was there. She didn't know it yet, but it was only a few months before the Germans took control of the city—and in that time it would get heavily attacked.

Loads of people ran for their lives, but Grandma Williams wanted to stay. She loved the city. And she loved the
gargoyle that lived there, high on the roof of the cathedral. She thought it protected her.

But the fighting got worse. Distant rumbles and booms came closer and closer. Planes circled in the sky, and every time one got shot, debris crashed down onto the city.

One day Grandma went to the cathedral to say thank you to the gargoyle. Thank you for looking after her. Thank you for keeping her safe. But when she got there, it was gone.

Everyone else thought it must have been moved, but Grandma knew better.

She knew it had flown away.

And that's when she realized the War was coming whether she liked it or not . . .

After school I grab my bag and the diary and rush out into the hall. I can't wait to tell Mom how well it went. I can't wait to tell her about the look on everyone's faces when I told them my story.

Boys and girls hurry past, screaming and laughing and joking.

Matt and two friends are waiting for me in the courtyard. One of them is so huge he could be in secondary school, and the other has thin eyes and pointy ears and rat teeth poking out of his sneering mouth.

“All right, Liam,” says the ratty one. “How's your girlfriend?”

For a second I wonder what he's talking about, but then the other boy starts singing.

“Mrs. Culpepper and Liam, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S . . .”

“Shut up, Joe,” says Matt, smacking the fat kid on the arm.

Every breath comes quicker and quicker, stinging my lungs. I forget about the gargoyle now and all I can see is Mom.
It'll be all right
, I said to her, and I hoped it would be, hoped it so much that I really thought it would be. But it's not all right. It's not all right, because Matt and his friends are coming toward me, and there's nowhere I can go.

“She's not my girlfriend,” I say, and I hate myself for sounding so stupid.

But it doesn't make any difference.

“Hold him,” Matt says, and the other two rush at me and grab me and push me until I can feel the hard brick wall against my back. “Open his mouth.”

Grubby fingers grab my face and squeeze my cheeks and I try to clench my jaw shut but they squeeze so hard and I can't hold out and my mouth opens and Matt shoves something damp and heavy and
earthy
inside it.

Retching and coughing, I pull away and spit mud and flowers onto the pavement.

“Tell a story about
that
,” Matt says.

They race off, their laughter ringing off the walls.

I cough and spit and wipe the mud off my tongue with my sleeve.

I don't remember dropping my bag, but I must have done because my foot catches on it and I stumble and almost fall.

Grandma's diary has fallen out of it and scuffed along the ground. I pick it up and turn it over, and my stomach drops all the way to my feet and stays there squirming.

The drawing of the gargoyle. It's scratched and scraped. It's ruined.

Tears well in my eyes, but I blink and rub them away.

I'm not going to cry here.

My stomach's writhing when I go into the playground to find Mom. There are still a few kids running about, still a few parents waiting by the fence, but Mom isn't there.

She's nowhere to be seen.