Tall Story (19 page)

They probably took one look at eeny meeny me and thought, no problem.

And then it was too late.

Because. I. Don’t. Miss.

The Souls knew the drill. They just had to keep feeding me the ball.

The Colts were big and burly but they were too dumb to work out that a small person like me would shoot from the three-point line. Over and over again, the Colts bunched up under the goal, waiting for one of us to come close enough to shoot, only for me to pound it in from far, far away.

Swish. Swish. Swish
.

I was glad for the headband. It mopped up the sweat that dripped endlessly down my head, which was getting stickier and stickier as my perspiration mixed with the cheap hair gel Mrs Green had put on my hair.

Rocky’s dreads were standing on end, the atmosphere was so electric.

As we took our positions for the free throws, Rocky sidled up. ‘YOU, Andi-Pandy, are my secret weapon!’ He grinned. I could smell the relief on his sweat.

Surely Bernardo would be here by now. Scanning the faces on the sidelines, I recognized some kids from my class, waving like demented fans. And Mrs Green was screaming at the Souls to get some boys down to the halfway line. She acted as if she was their coach.

But there was no tall dark head poking above the crowd.

Bernardo, where are you?

Something must have happened to him.

Rambo loomed just to my left. He smirked. ‘No chance, pretty little boy,’ he said. ‘You’ll screw up and then we’re taking that ball.’

‘Why don’t you go and lift some weights?’ I said.
Bernardo, not long now
.

But when I took the first shot, I missed.

Thunk
.

I missed! But I never miss!

‘Told you.’ Rambo grinned.

Suddenly the crowd hushed.

Bernardo, I’m coming.

I licked my lips.
Focus, Andi. Only one more minute and the game will be over.

I released my second free throw.

Swish
.

The crowd roared. 29–30!

Rambo charged, elbowing me aside to grab the ball. I stumbled but the referee didn’t call a foul.

I skittered down the court, not even checking to see which of the Souls would retrieve the ball. There was no time. I had to be ready on the three-point line if we were to—

‘ANDI!’

I looked round in time to see Rocky throw himself between Rambo and the ball, knocking it down the court towards me.

Stay cool. Stay cool
.

The Colts galloped after it. They were steaming, desperate.

The ball bounced twice and then rolled slowly in my direction.

‘SHOOT! SHOOT! SHOOT!’

The crowd was beside itself.

Stay cool.

I picked up the ball and released it in one swooping movement.

Bingo.

Three points!

Souls: 32, Colts: 30.

The Souls had won their first and last game of the season.

‘Andi! Andi! You did it!’ I could hear Rocky’s voice above the pandemonium as the crowd rushed onto the court to congratulate us.

‘Andi! Andi!’ Mrs Green’s voice rose above the crowd.

‘Hey! Andi! Come back!’ Rocky yelled.

But I didn’t stop running. Out of the double doors, out of the school gates.

I kept on running until I got home.

‘Y
our brother is here.’

The nurse nodded towards the doorway.

Brother? I turned my head slowly and peered through the fog of pain at the small figure in the basketball uniform.

‘That my sister,’ I whispered and the nurse made a small snorting noise before she turned away.

Andi rushed to my side. ‘Bernardo!’ I closed my eyes, the light was so bright. Raindrops trickled on my face. ‘Oh, Bernardo, I ran all the way here. Mum left a note on the door.’ The raindrops were Andi’s tears, and they were falling fast.

I lifted my hand to point at the uniform and the gesture launched another shard of glass into my brain. My lips were parched. I had to force my voice through the dry sand in my throat. ‘Why?’

‘I played for the Souls. I was point guard. That was my wish on the stone, Bernardo. It came true.’ I felt Andi’s lips on my cheek. They were soft and cool and
the pain seemed to dim just a little. ‘And we won.’

I tried to smile, but smiling made the knife dig deeper into the base of my skull. ‘You are so
galing
,’ I whispered. ‘So good.’

‘You have to leave, miss.’ The nurse put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Your brother has to go into the operating theatre now. The surgeons are waiting.’

A
nd then we had to wait.

Mum and Dad had been upstairs when he came home. They found Bernardo on the kitchen floor. How long had he lain there, unconscious?

The ambulance, when it came, had to call another ambulance to help them manoeuvre Bernardo out of the living room and through the front door. There was only room for Mum in the ambulance that took Bernardo to hospital so Dad followed in the other one.

When Bernardo woke up, his head hurt, his eyes hurt, his neck hurt, he could barely move. At casualty, they did some tests, ran all the scans again. By the time I turned up, they had decided to operate.

‘How bad is it, Mum?’

It must have been bad bad. I could tell from the terror in Mum’s eyes. Having retrieved Bernardo after all these years, she thought he was about to be snatched away again. Was it the tumour? Were they
going to cut him open and take it out? She was beside herself, and getting any information out of her was impossible. And I couldn’t get Dad to explain anything to me either. He was too busy wrapping himself around Mum, turning into a human firewall, trying to shield her from all the things that have to be decided and signed and approved before your child goes into surgery. Shield her from the possibility of grief. Shield her from the people too.

Mum and Dad knew practically everyone at the hospital, of course. Doctors and nurses and orderlies were constantly stopping to talk to us.

‘Oh, is this your daughter?’

‘So sorry to hear about what happened to your son.’

‘Poor you, is there anything we can do?’

Nobody would leave us alone.

So in the end we went home. It would be hours before they let Bernardo out of the operating theatre, and anyway, it was two in the morning and we needed to get some sleep. As if.

When we got home, I rushed upstairs and looked wildly around my room. The wishing stone. It was lying on Bernardo’s bed.

I picked it up and knelt with the stone clutched to
my heart.
Please. Please. Make Bernardo better.
If ever there was a time to believe in miracles, this was it.
Please heal the tumour.

Then I knelt there for a long time. Willing the wish to come true.

But of course nothing happened.

Wishes don’t come true.

Bernardo turning into a giant.

Getting my wish to play with the Souls.

It was all stupid coincidence, wasn’t it?

I dragged myself to my feet, feeling foolish.

The stone lay cold and useless in the palm of my hand. I was such an idiot.

I ran downstairs, pulled open the front door, and threw it into the rubbish bin by the front gate.

When I came back into the house, Mum and Dad were standing like statues in front of the answering machine in the living room. Its lights blinked furiously, like landing lights on a runway.

Ten messages, the digital counter said. Clearly, the lines from the Philippines had unblocked while we were at the hospital and here, at last, was news.

But they just stood there, staring.

Dad put his arm around Mum.

‘Go on, you have to find out,’ he whispered gently.

Mum cringed.

I climbed onto the sofa, hugging my knees. I waited, my heart in my throat.

Mum pressed the button and screwed her eyes shut as if something was about to hit her.

‘First message,’ the brash metallic voice said.
Beep!

‘Hello, hello? Mary Ann? Can you hear me?’

It was Auntie Sofia.

Auntie Sofia told Mum that up and down Montalban, the earthquake had pounded villages to extinction. The land was reduced to rubble as far as the eye could see. Everywhere, too, death had swept away men, women and children. The Philippines wept for hundreds.

San Andres itself was flattened. It was as if a giant foot had descended from above and stamped on the village.

And yet San Andres was hailed as the great miracle of the earthquake. Because though not a single house was left standing and the dome of its idiosyncratic stadium had collapsed into itself like a boiled egg tapped too hard by a spoon, in San Andres lives had been spared.

Only one person was found to be missing.

‘Who is it? Is it someone we know?’ Mum had cried. And when Auntie answered, I knew right away that all that stuff about San Andres being a miracle had been a kindness. Auntie had been preparing Mum for some really bad news.

‘Jabby? Oh no, no, no.’ And Mum put her head down on the table and began to sob. Dad bowed his head and awkwardly patted her shoulders.

I stared into space. Bernardo loved Jabby like a brother and now he was gone. How were we going to tell him what happened? How were we—

That was when I heard it ringing. It was the theme from
Star Wars
. Bernardo’s ring tone.

It was behind the fridge for some reason. I had to lie on my tummy and reach through a curtain of cobwebs to retrieve it. How did it get there?

Twenty missed calls, Bernardo’s screen said.

I clicked through.

All of them from Jabby.

I
didn’t know, of course, that Andi found the phone.

I was busy, lying on two operating tables laid end to end to accommodate my length, my shaven scalp peeled away from my head as the surgeons probed for the source of my troubles.

I didn’t know, but when I heard the story later, there was a strange familiarity to it, as if I had been there, as if I’d seen it all unfold with my own eyes.

It was the day the Arena would have opened, the day the Mountain Men would have played the Giant Killers. But of course things had not gone according to plan. The current contractor (was it the fourth or the fifth?) had insisted that half the building ought to be torn down because the foundations were substandard. He was fired and another contractor hired and then fired, and then suddenly they were all suing each other and there were newspaper articles about
bribery and corruption and illegal building permits and …

It had turned into a huge mess.

That very day it was announced that the owners were finally washing their hands of the Arena. They were going to rip out its insides and turn it into a covered market. Wreckers were scheduled to come in a week.

Jabby was devastated. All his dreams of glory had amounted to nothing. His immediate reaction was to call me, and his cellphone was ringing before he remembered that I was in London and that the call was going to cost a fortune and anyway it was probably four in the morning on the other side of the world. So he hung up before I could pick up.

That was Missed Call Number One.

And then he thought there was no time like now and he had better make the most of the Arena’s basketball court while it was still there.

And he thought of inviting one of the other boys, revealing his secret entrance, having a play … but no. There was still time before the wreckers came to dismantle the courts. He could show it off later. For now, he just wanted to enjoy having the Arena to himself. It was evening: there would be nobody there.

And that’s why Jabby was in the dome when the earthquake struck.

The first time the Earth moved, he was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he ignored it.

To be fair, earthquakes had been so frequent in San Andres that most village folk paid them no mind.

And then the bright yellow sports floor jerked up as if some great creature had shrugged its shoulders underground.

Jabby stood very, very still and realized that the ground was continuing to move. The creature was travelling the length of the court in one long motion. The stadium gave a loud groan.
Snap!
The glass light at the very top of the dome suddenly exploded into a thousand brilliant shards. He threw himself out of the way, cowering behind the first tier of seats as glass fell in a deadly rain.

The ground continued to move and the building groaned again. There was a series of popping noises and, looking up, he realized that the window panes were breaking, one after the other. A long crack split the ceiling and pieces of concrete were falling away in huge chunks.

Suddenly the seriousness of the situation hit home.
The dome was cracking up. If he didn’t get out, he would be killed. Jabby began to run.

He made it to the entrance of the tunnel by which he’d entered, when the dome collapsed.

He remembered a lesson taught by Sister Mary John, a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, when San Andres was still the rock-and-roll capital of the world (at least according to the Book of World Records). ‘If you are caught indoors during an earthquake,’ Sister Mary John advised, ‘look for triangles.’ Put yourself in a triangle and you might survive, she said. Stand under a door frame, under a table, under a sofa – triangles would give you some protection from a collapsing building.

Sister Beaulah had dismissed the theory. ‘That was a hoax, Sister,’ she’d argued with Sister Mary John. ‘You are wrong!’ And then they’d quarrelled while the class had fidgeted.

It was too dark to see anything, much less a triangle. Jabby groped along the tunnel wall towards the exit.
Only a few feet more
. Something groaned, and under his fingers he felt the wall bulge.
Hurry, hurry
. There was a roaring, rushing noise as, behind him, the Arena crumbled.
Just a few more feet
.

Too late.

Suddenly there was an animal roar and the tunnel collapsed. He found himself lying under a layer of rubble in total darkness. Pieces of concrete fell away from his face.