“I don’t think you’re similar,” Gran disagrees. She touches my knee with a hand that’s surprisingly firm and steady, and it’s an anchor, drawing me back down to Earth. Her blue eyes are different from the others’. She might know the truth, but she’s on my side, that’s what they seem to say as they gaze at me behind glasses that glint with something warmer than candlelight.
“They’ve known the truth my whole life, and they’ve let me believe a lie!”
It’s dark in my bedroom, the only light coming from Mr. Goldfish, who’s perched on my desk as I yank off my clothes and chuck them in the laundry basket. I cling to the memory of Gran’s hand on my knee, but then I see Uncle Paul’s traitorous one shooting across the table, and Jack’s deceitful one, touching my shoulder. I shudder, pulling on my onesie pajamas, staring in the mirror at their bold orange stripes.
Tonight I am all tiger, burning brightly, feeling fierce with extra-sharp claws.
“I’m going to get that wallet.”
I seize Mr. Goldfish off the desk and pace up and down my room that’s not my room because I don’t belong here anymore. The feeling was stronger than ever when we arrived home tonight and Jack put the key in the lock. He stepped onto the WELCOME doormat, kicking off his shoes and sliding into his slippers. The slippers. I stood on the pavement in my silver boots next to a silvery tree, jealous of its roots.
That’s how bad things have got, like I’m envious of a tree where Jedi has definitely peed six thousand times at a conservative estimate. At least the tree knows where it stands. It has a sense of place. It’s fixed. Attached. And I am lost.
I belong to nothing, and no one, but that’s all going to change.
“How, though? By stealing Mr. Richardson’s wallet?” Mr. Goldfish asks, his light shining on the window then my cupboard then my window again as we hurtle back and forth.
“Borrow his wallet. There’s a difference.”
“To you, maybe. To anyone who catches you, it will look like the same thing. It’s a terrible idea, Tess.”
“It’s the only one I’ve got.”
“It’s dangerous.”
“I have to do this.”
“It’s too risky.”
“But he’s out there somewhere!” I charge to the window, flinging it open to let in a rush of cold black air. “I have a dad. A real one. I have to find him. And you have to help me,” I say, only vaguely aware that I am talking to a flashlight. Light pours from his mouth like a search beam, scouring the darkness for clues. It picks out the slate roofs of terraced houses and a ginger cat on a mossy wall and three cars stuck at a traffic light, waiting for the go-ahead.
They get it, eventually, and so do I.
“Fine,” Mr. Goldfish says at last. The word shines from his lips, illuminating the night sky.
23
The December sunshine peps me up, the clean light bouncing off the windows of cars and buildings as I walk to school. It makes the world seem fresh and full of possibility.
I give Mr. Goldfish an excited squeeze. “We’ll do it today. We’ll get the address.”
“You’ve been saying that for two weeks.”
“Today is different.”
“You’ve also been saying that for two weeks.”
“But this time I mean it.”
“You’ve also been saying that for—”
“Okay, no offense or anything, but can you please be quiet? That isn’t helping.”
Normally, Mr. Richardson leaves the black rucksack in his classroom at break then goes to the staff room to meet Miss Gilbert. It pleases me immensely, the fact that Mr. Richardson so clearly has Miss Gilbert’s stamp of approval, like he might be a terrible teacher, but he’s a pretty great human being is what she seems to say every morning by accepting half the chocolate chip muffin. Sometimes they chat. Other times they drink tea. Mostly they do the crossword in the newspaper that Mr. Richardson brings to school when he arrives at nearly always a quarter past eight.
He’s a man of routine, leaving his classroom between ten thirteen and ten fifteen every break, returning on average thirty-seven seconds before the bell rings for third period is what I have learned from days of close surveillance. I’ve made notes, writing down his movements in a table I’ve drawn next to the one about Mr. Holdsworth’s mugs. It might sound odd—“It does sound odd,” Mr. Goldfish mutters—but I need to know his habits in precise detail if I am going to be successful in Operation Wallet.
“Let’s just call it Operation Tess Has Lost Her Mind, okay?”
“That’s not very supportive.”
“I’m not very supportive,” Mr. Goldfish replies as we approach school.
I take a different route, avoiding Connor and Adam and the staring eyes and the black crow that’s been there every time I’ve decided to risk walking across the bus lot, the bird circling above my head, its beak getting sharper and its claws more deadly as the comments get worse. Well, not anymore. I don’t need to hear them out loud, thank you very much. I’m fully aware of what people think because I check Twitter every night before I go to bed, cursing the anonymous @BlaiseOfGlory for posting the picture in the first place.
@BlaiseOfGlory
Tess-tosterone got changed for PE in a toilet stall today. What’s she trying to hide? #SheIsAHe
@BlaiseOfGlory
Anyone else notice that
she’s got a mustache? #SheIsAHe
@BlaiseOfGlory
I saw a bulge today. That’s all I’m saying. #SheIsAHe
I don’t want to read them, but I can’t stop reading them, like it’s an addiction or what have you, and I scroll endlessly, my eyes stinging in the bluish light. So far @IsabelBaggins hasn’t commented and neither has @DarkAnna.
“That’s because she’s the mysterious Blaise,” Mr. Goldfish says.
“Who?”
“Anna, obviously,” he replies, but I’m not so sure. Anna smiles at me in the hallway while Isabel marches past with her nose in the air. Anna stood up for me against Connor and promised to look out for me on Mr. Holdsworth’s orders, but Isabel has completely cut me out. It hurts to read the messages we used to send when we missed each other like crazy if we were separated even for a day.
How dare you be ill on a Monday when
we have math, Tess! PythagorARSE.
Apparently a2 + b2 = c2. Well, now I
know that I am ENLIGHTENED. Truly.
Get well—by tomorrow.
I will. I need you like a hypotenuse needs
a right angle. Translation: a lot.
The sandwich bar has run out of ham.
HAM. What kind of sandwich bar has
no HAM?
Kosher ones? I’ll Google it and get back
to you.
You do that. On a side note, the mug
was yellow today.
Now we’ve gone days and days without talking. It doesn’t even seem odd anymore, and that’s the saddest thing of all.
“It doesn’t make her Blaise though,” Mr. Goldfish says, and I want to believe him, but I can’t forget the way she giggled on the bench with Patrick. On that Wednesday morning, she showed him something on her phone. A few hours later, the picture of me on holiday had been posted on Twitter.
I reach the route that cuts across the athletic fields. The grass is wet and muddy but it’s still the best option. I squelch and I sink and I swear a lot and also cheer up a little bit too, because no one in their right mind would walk this way after last night’s rain. Just to be sure, I glance over my shoulder and see nothing but a bluebird singing chirpily in a tree. I am safe for a few minutes at least. It’s just me and the bird, the bird and me.
“And me,” Mr. Goldfish says, flitting about in my coat pocket.
“Not really.”
He leaps out into the open as the bird takes off so there’s a flutter of orange fins and blue wings. “That’s not very nice,” Mr. Goldfish says.
“Are you going to get behind the plan?”
> “Absolutely not.”
I shrug. “Then you’re dead to me.”
“But it’s crazy, Tess! You’re crazy!”
“Please stop talking about my sanity,” I snap. I’m still a little sensitive after the speech therapy session in the too-neat office with the too-neat woman who pretty much called me a lunatic.
In a very careful voice with very clear consonants, she asked Mum and Jack a few questions about how my silence started, and whether I had any long-standing problems with communication. Then she leaned back and crossed her legs. “I’m sorry, but there is nothing I can do.”
“What do you mean—there’s nothing you can do?” Jack repeated, gripping Mum’s arm as she gripped the strap of the Gucci bag. It was empty apart from her phone and keys. Her normal bag was at home at the bottom of the stairs, stuffed with used tissues and pens with no caps and a brush full of hair and a bruised banana and loads of other imperfect things that made up Mum’s life. This bag was for show, nothing more than a prop clutched in her manicured hand, jutting out of the sleeve of a perfectly ironed blouse. I didn’t recognize the blouse so it must have been new, and it made my heart ache, how hard she was trying to convince this woman, this stranger, that she was good enough to be my mum.
“It isn’t a problem with speech. Not a physical one, anyway. If, prior to the so-called mutism, Tess could talk perfectly well in a variety of contexts and has never had any developmental issues where speech is concerned, I am afraid this sort of thing is out of my remit. A sudden silence in an adolescent who has never had any language difficulties is highly unusual to say the least. The best course of action is to refer her to a psychologist,” she said, the last t hitting me in the face like a bullet.
Jack swore and Mum gasped and I winced, sitting between them on the too-firm sofa, desperate to tell the woman with the too-square fingernails that I’d made a huge mistake.
“Obviously I can speak!” I wanted to shout, but nothing came out. The therapist was dressed in a crisp white uniform with the type of stiff collar you just don’t mess with. It had gone too far. I couldn’t say a word without getting into serious trouble so I kept quiet as she filled out a form that looked scarily official.
“You’ll receive a letter in a few weeks’ time from CAMHS.”
Mum went pale. “What’s that?”
“Sorry. Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. They have a unit in South Manchester. It’s a great place. Welcoming and supportive,” she explained as I made a ferocious vow never to find out for myself if this was true.
“In the meantime, here are some leaflets you might find useful,” the speech therapist continued, passing this huge great big stack to Mum, who started to cry into a yellow handkerchief. It stayed out for a week, drying on the radiator in between Mum’s breakdowns. Every time I came downstairs to see it twisted in Mum’s hands, I almost caved, all these words pinging against my silence, harder and harder, until I was scared it was going to crack.
“Look, I’m sorry I said the c-word, okay?” Mr. Goldfish says, diving back into my pocket as I reach the library.
“Not the c-word.”
“You know what I mean. You’re not crazy, Tess, obviously.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Says the talking fish that only I can hear.”
I’m early, so I have the place to myself—at least that’s what I think until Isabel pops her head up over a table where she was crouched down by her bag. The library elongates to twice the size then shrinks as the awkwardness slams us together. Our movements seem massive. She gets out her notepad with arm gestures that fill the room as I walk to a desk by the window on feet bigger than the floor. They boom as she breathes and I blink as she coughs.
She coughs again, like maybe she’s clearing her throat to speak is what I am hoping with all this Beat in my wrists. But no. She buries her hot face in the pages of her notepad. I take some work out of my bag and try to focus because the words are back, a blizzard of them, hurtling against the glass. I want to speak. I want to speak so much I can taste it on my tongue, feel the shape of the words in my mouth, but I wait for the storm to pass. It does eventually, the words melting like snowflakes, trickling back down my throat.
I sneak a look. She’s writing furiously. Maybe something about me.
Freak. Trannie. He-she.
“Paranoia, paranoia, paranoia,” Mr. Goldfish says, spelling out the word with his light so it glows in my pocket. I hope he’s right.
Next time I check, Isabel has gone. I pack up and make my way to homeroom. Miss Gilbert waves as I walk in.
“What a beautiful day, dude. A day to make things happen, don’t you think?”
I agree. By break time I’ll have that wallet.
24
Mr. Richardson’s room might be empty, but it feels alive, the air quivering and the walls watching and the lights murmuring some sort of judgment. I tiptoe toward Mr. Richardson’s desk, but no one intervenes. No one shouts or tells me to stop as I bend down by the rucksack on the classroom floor.
It’s almost too easy. The bag is here, and so am I, and the zip is open, inviting me to look inside. I peer into the black depths. There’s a bunch of keys, a new teacher’s planner, and an old book of sudoku. Of course there’s an old book of sudoku. If he really is my dad, we’re going to have all sorts of things in common.
“Stop fondling it and get a move on,” Mr. Goldfish whispers so I move the book to one side and go deeper, deep as I can. If he came back now, I would be in so much trouble, definitely suspended and maybe even expelled. My mind plays it out—Mr. Richardson appearing in the square of glass, his cheeks draining of color as he finds me elbow-deep in his rucksack. Thief, he’d cry at the top of his voice. Thief!
“Hurry!” Mr. Goldfish says because I’ve stalled, my hand freezing as I glance at the door to check it is still closed.
Click.
Heart hammering, I jump to my feet but it’s just—“The radiator,” Mr. Goldfish says. “Just the radiator.”
Squatting down on wobbly legs, I take a deep breath to calm myself, or try to, because let’s be clear, I am way past that point. I am noise and sweat and fear, jangling nerves and tight muscles and wild eyes looking at the bag, which becomes a monster, a living, breathing monster with menacing jaws waiting to bite off my hand.
Mr. Goldfish nudges his nose against my leg. “Come on! It’s twenty-five past ten.”
I swirl my arm one way then the other, my fingers scouring the objects in the beast’s belly.
“It isn’t here!”
“Side pocket!” Mr. Goldfish shouts, beside himself now, a flash of crazed orange. “It must be in a side pocket!”
I twist the bag to face me and make a start on the left. The noise of the zip echoes around the school, the sound quite possibly of my sanity ripping in two. This is madness. Mr. Goldfish was right. This is crazy and so risky and completely futile because I am never going to find it—except that I do.
A wallet.
A brown leather wallet hiding at the very bottom of the side pocket. I pull it out with a clammy hand. The contents take my breath away, my lungs swooning against my ribs.
This is his stuff. Credit cards and receipts and a photo of a toddler and a woman with auburn hair—his late wife, it must be, because no one would keep a picture of an ex in their wallet. He’s a widower who plays chess on the weekends to fill the lonely hours, and I feel so sorry for him as I gaze down at a young Henry beaming up at the woman beneath a blossom tree that will always be in flower in Mr. Richardson’s mind, I just know it.
“For God’s sake, the driver’s license!”
“Sorry, sorry!”
I turn my attention to the cards jammed in the narrow slots, four stuffed in each one making it difficult to pull them out. It’s painstaking and I am panicking because there’s more noise now, people starting to make their way to their next class on feet that rumble in the hallway because somehow, unbelievably, school is carrying on as normal outside thi
s room.
“Abort mission! Abort mission!” Mr. Goldfish cries, but I carry on, the wallet shaking as I go through the cards in the first slot and the second slot and the third slot—and there, at the back of the very last slot, is something pale and pink and oh so promising. I tease it out.
The license.
It contains everything I need to know. Mr. Richardson’s full name. His date of birth. And his home address.
There’s no time to study it now, but I do register that he’s called Jack, which makes me laugh out loud, the first noise I’ve made in days. It sounds odd to my ears, brash and abrupt. Pulling out my phone, I take a picture of this Jack, my Jack, staring up at me from the license with eyes so like my own.
“You’re on. You’re totally on. A horse-drawing competition it is. But you’ll regret it.”
“What?” I ask Mr. Goldfish, who stiffens in my pocket.
“I didn’t say anything,” he whispers.
The voice didn’t come from inside my head. The voice came from outside the classroom door.
“Farmyard animals are my specialty,” Mr. Richardson says as I shove his driver’s license back into his wallet in the wrong damn slot.
“That’s the wrong damn slot!” Mr. Goldfish shouts.
I try to rectify my mistake but the card is jammed and my fingers are too slippery so it stays where it is.
The door handle rattles, Mr. Richardson grasping the cool metal, getting ready to open the door as he chats to someone not in view.
“Farmyard animals are your specialty? Why? Were you a sow in a former life or something?”
I’d recognize her voice anywhere. It’s Miss Gilbert, and she’s giggling, too high-spirited for a teacher. Wild, that’s how she seems, with a personality that gallops in a place where people trot.
“You do know a sow is a female pig, not a male one?” Mr. Richardson asks, cantering now, trying to keep pace. I can hear it, his spirit rising on hind legs before throwing caution to the wind and making chase, maybe even for the first time since his wife passed away.