When I was younger I thought a mirage was something you’d only see if you got lost in the desert. Delirious, you’d drag yourself along the scorching sand, inch by inch, as you desperately search for water. Suddenly you spot something shimmering on the horizon. It’s a pastel-colored ice-cream van! You can almost hear the tinkling music. It beckons you closer and closer with its promise of deliciously cold Popsicles waiting in the deep, dark freezer. Your mouth floods with precious saliva as you try to reach it, but when you’re just inches away it vanishes! All that’s there, in the exact spot where the ice-cream van just stood, is a shriveled-up cactus.
I saw lots of mirages on the road on the way to the doctor. Not ghostly ice-cream vans but dark pools of water puddled along the tarmac. They looked so real I could almost hear the splash as we drove through them. Dad told me once that they were called highway mirages, which sounded about right. He knew a lot of stuff, my dad. Brian’s Brains was always one of the top three teams in the monthly pub quiz. You could ask him anything and he’d immediately have an answer.
“Dad, who was on the throne during the Black Death?”
“Edward III.”
“What is the capital of Latvia?”
“Riga.”
“What is the chemical symbol for copper?”
“Cu.”
“What is wrong with your eldest and only son?”
“He’s crazy.”
Not that he would have said that out loud, but I was pretty sure he thought it. I figured they both did.
Mum had the air-conditioning on. It was directed downward so my feet felt like blocks of ice. I would have twisted the dial around but I didn’t want to touch it.
“Mr. Charles’s grandchildren seem to be settling in okay, don’t they? That must be nice for him, to have a bit of company for a change,” Mum said as we crawled along High Street.
She was trying that conversation thing again.
“I don’t know how he’ll manage for a whole month though, do you? He’s no spring chicken.”
I kept my mouth shut. I certainly wasn’t going to talk to her after the way she’d embarrassed me in front of the whole neighborhood.
She’d sat in the car with the engine running while I remained paralyzed on the doormat. Mr. Jenkins had come back from a run as I stood there, spotting me as he turned into his driveway. He stood there for a moment with his hands on his hips, sweat running down his face as he looked me up and down.
To minimize any possible health risks, I was wearing: a long-sleeved shirt, which I’d buttoned up to the neck; jeans; socks; rubber boots; and two pairs of latex gloves (six pairs remaining). It was about ninety degrees outside. I was pretty hot.
“What are you doing, Corbin?” he said, but he didn’t wait for an answer, just shook his head in disgust and went inside.
I don’t think Mum heard him. She rolled down her window and hollered at me.
“Two words for you, Matthew Corbin. Callum’s angel!”
Her voice bounced off the houses like a pinball. Old Nina’s curtain twitched and her dark shadow peered through the thick nets, trying to see what all the noise was about. Penny and Gordon Sullivan appeared in the front yard of number one and began to walk over. They always pop up if it looks like something interesting is going on.
“Everything all right, Sheila?” Penny called.
They arrived at our driveway each holding a Harrington’s Household Solutions catalog, which I’m sure they’d just grabbed to use as a cover. Penny and Gordon went everywhere together. It was as if they were tied at the waist with a piece of invisible string, and if one ventured too far from the other they’d just ping back together again. In fact, I didn’t think I’d ever, ever seen them apart.
Mum waved at them from the car.
“Yes, all fine here, Penny. Hello, Gordon. Thank you! Just a preteen pushing the boundaries … You know how it is …”
She forced a laugh and the retired couple laughed along with her, but they soon stopped when they got a good look at me.
“We’ll leave you to it then, Sheila,” Penny said, raising her eyebrows at me. She muttered something to her husband and the invisible string twanged as she turned back to the house with Gordon following.
“Come on, Matthew! We’re going to be late!”
“But Mum, you don’t realize what this will do to me … please.”
A loud meow came from behind me in the hallway. Nigel.
“Matthew. You swore on Callum’s angel. Nothing is more sacred than that. Now. Get. In. The. Car.”
The meowing was getting closer. I looked around and saw Nigel sauntering along, looking for something to brush against. He stopped for a moment, his eyes fixed on me.
“Matthew. NOW!”
I flinched as Mum shouted, jumped off the step, slammed the front door behind me, and got in the car.
So there we were: at a standstill in a traffic jam on High Street.
“Oh look, that’s your friend Tom, isn’t it? Shall I give him a beep? He’d be so glad to see you out and about!”
Mum waved madly through the windshield at a group of kids in white shirts and blue ties. Fortunately they didn’t notice.
“Mum! Stop it!”
I slid down in my seat as Mum sat back and huffed.
Standing a few meters from my window and sipping from a can of Coke was my best friend, Tom. My old best friend. He was with a boy from school called Simon, and they were both laughing and swaying as though they’d lost the ability to stand upright.
“Simon Duke?” I said under my breath. “What’s he hanging around with him for?”
Simon Duke was a bit of an idiot who made stuff up. For example, he once said that his dad was a top agent with the FBI. Apparently they were only living in England temporarily and at any moment they could get a call telling them to jump on a plane to wherever the next assignment took them.
“If I don’t come to school one day, you’ll know we’ve gotten the call and I’m outta here,” he announced to our math class last year, slipping into a dreadful American accent as he tapped the side of his nose.
Simon’s downfall came about when someone spotted Mr. Duke in a hardware store wearing an orange apron and helping a customer lift a new toilet into a shopping cart. He got a lot of grief after that.
“Simon, we thought your dad worked for the FBI, not in DIY!”
“What happens when he needs to arrest someone? Does he ask them to ‘stick ’em up’ and shoot them with a glue gun?”
Amazingly, Simon managed to shrug the comments off:
“Dad’s got to keep up an appearance of normality, doesn’t he?”
And now, even more amazingly, Tom had decided to hang around with him.
We edged along the line of traffic and I watched them in the side mirror.
“You can ask your friends over any time, you know, Matthew,” said Mum. “You don’t want to lose contact with them.”
I ignored her and watched Tom and Simon shrink in the mirror as we moved onward.
The urge to wash my hands was intensifying, and I was so hot that my eyelids were sweating. I closed them and tried to calm my breathing as Mum continued with a running commentary about her clients at work, the neighbors, anything she could think of to fill the silence.
“… the girl, Casey, is only six and little Teddy is fifteen months, so he’ll have diapers to deal with! Can you imagine an old man coping with that? He’ll be exhausted.”
I listened to her chattering, trying to swallow the sick feeling I had in my stomach, and then finally the car engine slowed as we pulled into the doctor’s parking lot. I opened my eyes and blinked at the bright sunlight.
“I’m very proud of you, Matthew. I’m sorry I shouted earlier about you getting in the car, but I just want you to … be … to have a normal life. That’s all. I’m just thinking of you.”
I nodded, unable to speak. After a deep breath, I opened the door.
The waiting room was quiet and I sat in the front row of seats, which were all empty. Mum stood at the reception desk waiting to check us in. An aqua-blue fish tank bubbled away in the corner, a toy shark on the other side of the glass, its mouth opening and closing with a three-second delay. I spotted a thumbtack in the crease between the carpet and the baseboard, the sharp end pointing upward. Directly above it, on the wall, was a laminated sign stating that in the month of June there had been 24 missed appointments. June and the number 24 were written in black felt pen, which the reception staff must rub out and change each month. The bottom left-hand corner of the poster was not pinned down and gaped away from the wall slightly. I very much wanted to pick the pin up and put it back where it belonged. If the pin was back in its place, then everything would be all right. I would be all right. I looked over at Mum, who was heading toward me, but she changed direction when she spotted someone she knew at the back of the room.
“Hello, Claudia! Isn’t it hot? I love it though, don’t you?”
I kept my eyes on the thumbtack. I was not looking at anyone around me, not listening to a man with a hacking cough or feeling the infested chair beneath my legs. Just concentrate on the pin. Take deep breaths and count to three. One … two … thr—
“What you in here for then?”
I caught my breath. Someone had sat next to me. Close. I could see a blue school cardigan out of the corner of my eye.
“Is it a skin condition? Is that why you’ve got those gloves on?”
I turned to face Melody Bird, the girl from my class who lived across the street. The one who visited the graveyard a lot. Claudia was her mum, who my mum was now talking to. The hairs on my arm bristled. Melody made me nervous. Apart from her unnatural interest in the cemetery, she lived next door to Penny and Gordon at number one, and her house was number three; and those two numbers next to each other were bad news. “Tenplusthree” was becoming an issue for me, and I was trying to avoid it as much as I could. I’d found out that in some cities around the world, there were skyscrapers that didn’t have a “tenplusthree” floor and they just called it 12A or something, or else skipped right from 12 to 14. People wouldn’t do something like that unless there was a good reason.
Fortunately Chestnut Close stops at Mr. Charles’s house, number eleven. We’d once had a Christmas card delivered that was addressed to Mr. P. James, tenplusthree Chestnut Close. That unopened card sat on the windowsill next to our front door long into the summer because Mum couldn’t bring herself to throw it away, even though the house, and possibly Mr. P. James, didn’t exist. I was thinking about all of this while Melody talked. I didn’t really hear what she was saying, but I noticed she was sitting really close.
“Can you move back a bit?” I said.
Her large brown eyes squinted at me as she shuffled back a little in her chair.
“Why? Are you contagious or something?”
“No.”
She scratched her nose with a chewed fingernail and I turned away, focusing again on the thumbtack. A bead of sweat trickled slowly down my spine. A fan on the reception desk blew a blast of warm air every four seconds around the waiting room.
“So, can’t you tell me what’s wrong with you then?”
“No.”
She was quiet for a minute, and then I felt the heat from her arm as she edged toward me again.
“Can’t or won’t?”
I turned and faced her, leaning back slightly as if she had bad breath.
“Won’t.”
Tucking a long strand of brown hair behind one ear, she held my gaze for a moment and then shrugged.
“Fair enough.”
I looked at the thumbtack and pictured myself picking it up and pressing it into the corner of the poster on the wall. Everything where it belonged, then all would be okay. I took some notes in my mind:
Wednesday, July 23rd. 10:45 a.m. Doctor’s waiting room.
Number of people in waiting room = 9
Number of reception staff = 4
Number of fish in tank = 12
Number of thumbtacks on poster on wall = 3
Number of thumbtacks on floor = 1
“Verrucas.”
I shut my eyes for a second before turning to Melody again.
“Sorry?”
“That’s why I’m here. I’ve got a cluster of them on my big toe. They hurt like crazy. Got to have them all burnt off, I guess. You had a verruca before?”
“Nope.”
“They’re really painful.”
She whipped her head around to take a look at our mums.
“Your mum’s really pretty, isn’t she?”
I couldn’t think of an answer to that, so I kept quiet.
“Hey, I hear your neighbor has his grandchildren staying with him. That’ll be good, won’t it? Having some new faces around?”
I scowled at her.
“It’s just a couple of kids.”
She crossed and uncrossed her legs and then picked at the hem of her gray skirt.
“Apparently their mum is some kind of top businesswoman. I bet she’s rich, don’t you?”
I rubbed my forehead. My head was pounding.
“It was so hot in class yesterday. I can’t wait for summer vacation. I’ve got science after this, but I’m not going to rush back. They’re not going to know, are they?”
She studied her left palm and traced her fingernail along a couple of the lines before turning back to me.
“What doctor are you seeing? It’s not Dr. Kerr, is it? I can’t stand him. He must be about ninety and he’s always got bits of food on his shirt. Urgh.”
The fact that I wasn’t answering any of her questions didn’t seem to put her off. I closed my eyes, hoping she’d take the hint.
“Do you want me to get you some water? You look like you’re going to melt. Those gloves must be roasting.”
I shook my head and wiped the back of my neck with the cuff of my shirt, trying to soak up a bit of the perspiration. If I could just get that pin back on the poster, then things would be right again and maybe Melody would go away.
“Are you friends with Jake Bishop?”
“No.”
“Good. I hate him. He can be so evil sometimes. I can’t believe he lives on our street. I mean, out of everyone in the world he is the last person I’d want to have as my neighbor. Don’t you think?”
I jolted as a loud BEEP blasted the waiting room. A gruff, male voice came over the speakers asking for Mr. Andrews to go to Room 2.
“Ha! You nearly fell off your seat. You should have seen your face! You really jumped!”
As she laughed, her arm brushed against my shirt, so I slid onto the seat next to me.
“Where’re you going? Look, I’m sorry. It was just funny, that’s all.”
She was still giggling as she moved closer. I could hear my mum behind us:
“… I just don’t know what to do, Claudia. I’ve got the attendance officer on my back now. Why can’t we just get him to school? What did we do that was so wrong?”
The general hum of the waiting room had silenced as every ear strained to hear what my mum was going to say next. I cringed. Fortunately summer was right around the corner, so I figured it would all be fine soon. And when September came around, I’d make an effort to get back to normal and go in every day.
The button on my top collar was tight and it felt like I was slowly suffocating. Melody cleared her throat, ready to project another wave of verbal vomit at me, but this time I was quite grateful, as she might just drown my mum out.
“I think someone should stand up to Jake Bishop, don’t you? Didn’t you used to be friends with him once? Back in elementary school? Was he always so nasty?”
I shrugged.
“Well, I think he’s gotten away with being an idiot for far too long … Are you sure you’re okay? Your face has gone gray.”
“I’ve got a bad headache.”
She frowned, and I wondered if she was thinking she might be the cause.
“I can come to your house one day if you like? We can hang out during vacation. Keep each other company.”
Her bottom lip curled over her top and her brow furrowed as she waited for an answer. An old man shuffled by, and I tucked my legs under my chair to keep them out of the way.
“I don’t think so. I haven’t been well lately.” I gave a little cough.
She smacked the heel of her hand onto her forehead, making me flinch.
“Oh of course, the mystery illness! Well, that’s fine if you don’t want to tell me what’s wrong. We all have our secrets, don’t we?”
Her eyes narrowed, and I was wondering what she meant when there was another loud BEEP.
“Melody Bird, Room 4, please.”
“That’s me! Well, see you later, Matty.”
Her hand suddenly reached toward me, and she squeezed my forearm before she headed off along the corridor with her mum. My arm tingled where her hand had touched it. Not a good tingle—an infected tingle. Washing was imperative, but there was no way I was going to venture into the bathroom of a doctor’s office. I searched the baseboard for the missing thumbtack as Mum arrived next to me with a sigh.
“She’s nice, that Claudia. A bit, you know, New Agey, but she’s all right. I told her she should get herself to the salon and we’ll thread her eyebrows for her.”
Rummaging in her bag, she pulled out her phone and started texting someone. Now was my chance. My legs wobbled as I stood up and my ears began to ring. This possibly wasn’t the best idea I’d ever had, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to go home and leave that poster like that. I bent down slowly, and just as my fingers reached the cold pin, everything went black.
I woke with a cold, wet washcloth on my forehead. The receptionist, Mum, and a nurse were all staring down at me. They fussed over me for a while, talking about whether I needed to go to the hospital, and all I wanted to say to them was: Look, could someone just put that pin back in that poster over there? My gloves had been removed, and I told Mum I had to go home immediately, but she said we were going to see Dr. Kerr even if she had to drag me.
His office was dark and musty. I perched on the edge of the chair and stared at my naked hands in the gloomy light as Mum told the doctor how anxious I’d become, how I liked to keep things clean all the time. She was using her posh voice, the one she used in front of teachers, people who work in banks, and Mr. Charles.
“We just don’t know what to do anymore, Dr. Kerr. We’re at a loss!”
Dr. Kerr’s bones creaked as he wrote some notes and we both waited for him to answer. In the corner was an old computer covered in a thin layer of dust. Melody was right, he did look about ninety. And I counted at least six stains of various colors on his shirt. I was just beginning to think maybe he hadn’t heard anything Mum had said when he suddenly burst into life.
“Not much we can do here, I’m afraid. I’ll refer him to a psychotherapist, arrange a face-to-face assessment. In all likelihood you’re looking at six weeks of counseling, maybe more, and then he should be feeling right as rain.”
He squinted at me, even though he hadn’t actually spoken to me at all.
Great. Can I go now? bubbled across my tongue, dangerously close to escaping.
“How long will we have to wait for an appointment, doctor?” said Mum.
He looked back down at his notes, his pen scratching once more. “Well, these things take a while, unfortunately. I think the current wait time is at least three to four months. Maybe longer.”
He kept his head down, writing, and then Mum suddenly slapped her hand on the desk. Dr. Kerr and I bounced in our chairs as if we’d both gone over a speed bump.
“Three months? Three months? Are you serious?” Mum’s posh voice was obliterated. Dr. Kerr rolled his eyes.
“Mrs. Corbin, I’m sorry, but there is a waiting list and your son isn’t an urgent case. I’ll write a letter to his school and explain. They’ll arrange a meeting with you and the local authority to discuss your son’s absence if they haven’t already done so.”
He flicked through an old Rolodex and copied something onto a yellow Post-it note.
Creak, creak, creak.
“Here are a couple of private therapists who may be able to help you—if you’re willing to pay.”
He leaned forward with the fluttering note stuck to a finger and Mum snatched it from him. Then she stood up and stormed out, leaving me sitting there on my own. Dr. Kerr just sighed and carried on writing as if I didn’t exist. I stood to go too, but stopped when I reached the door.
“I’m sorry about my mum shouting, Dr. Kerr. She’s been a bit stressed lately. You know, because of everything.”
The old man concentrated on his writing pad for a moment and then looked up. “You’re a nice boy, Matthew. Stop all this messing around now, eh? There’s a good lad.”
He looked down again and waved his hand as if he were shooing away an annoying wasp. I had been dismissed.
I went to bed while it was still light outside. My limbs felt heavy, my brain exhausted. I must have fallen asleep within minutes to the sound of a blackbird singing outside. When I woke up it was dark. My clock glowed red: 2:34 a.m. Something had disturbed me, but in that just-awake state I wasn’t sure what; and then I heard knocking on the other side of my wall.
Tap, tap, tap.
I sat up and listened again.
Tap, tap, tap.
“Can you hear that?” I whispered to the Wallpaper Lion. “She’s doing it again.”
I closed my eyes and listened.
Tap, tap, tap.
“Are you there, Goldfish Boy? Are you back in your tank?”
It was Casey. I clenched my hand into a fist, ready to thump back if she did it again. I waited for ten minutes, but there was silence.