The Taming of Lilah May (12 page)

I'm thinking about Mum's sad face and Dad having to leave a pregnant lioness about to give birth to lots of helpless little baby lion cubs, and about how every weekend is now dominated by us all worrying about what Jay's going to do or not do, and a little part of me is stirring up and feeling vivid and alive
with anger. And it's wiping out all the good memories of the holiday on the boat and our childhood and all the games we used to play. So I don't even think of knocking politely on my brother's door, I just grip the handle and barge in.

It takes my eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom.

There's music blaring out and the window is shut, so the room stinks.

Jay's on the floor with his back up against the bed and his head drooping down towards his chest, and when I come in he kind of looks up, but as if in slow motion, and his eyes are frowning at me like he doesn't recognise me. And then he speaks in a voice that sounds as if he's drunk about twenty cans of lager, and he says, ‘Get the hell out of my bedroom, little girl.' His voice is low and menacing, like the rumble of a train in the distance that's about to speed up and mow me down, so I start to back towards the door, but by then it's too late, and I've already seen it.

There's a tin on his lap, and some sort of needle lying next to him, and Jay's got a thin, black band pulled tight around his soft, white arm.

I've seen people doing it on television.

I know what it is.

‘You tell Mum and Dad, you're dead,' says my brother in this new voice I don't recognise. ‘Got it?'

I stumble out of the room backwards.

And I spend the night alone in my room.

When we go and report the strange call from Jay's phone, the police aren't very helpful or sympathetic.

‘Don't get your hopes up,' they say. ‘We'll trace the call, but to be honest, anybody could have that mobile and be making calls on it.'

‘But why would they call somebody from Jay's band, unless they were Jay?' says Mum. ‘We've got to have some hope. It's been over two years,' she says, more to herself than to us.

She's holding my hand, but her nails are digging into my palm and her wedding ring is cutting into the side of my finger.

‘You'd be surprised how many idiots there are out there, Mrs May,' says one of the policemen, a young guy with dark hair and serious brown eyes. He eyes my mother's weird clown costume as he speaks. ‘Some people will do anything when they're bored.'

We drive home again in silence.

The tense air in the car has gone, to be replaced by a big deflated feeling, like we've all been blown up and popped with a giant pin.

‘This sucks,' I mutter from the back seat, where I'm slumped against the window.

‘Yes, Lilah, thank you for putting it so eloquently, as usual,' says Dad with a huge sigh. He's driving as if he can't be bothered, tipping the wheel back and forth with two fingers and leaning right back against the headrest.

I scowl in the dark, even though they can't see me, and mutter ‘
Seagullvians,
' to myself.

‘Well, sorry you're left with your horrid daughter when all you want is your lovely son,' I say, although I know I shouldn't.

I can't help myself sometimes.

The anger just kind of takes hold of me and bursts out of my mouth, even if I press my lips really hard together.

‘You're obviously going through your Terrible Teens,' says Mum. Her voice is broken and thick with tears. ‘Jay was going through them as well, Lilah. I'm not saying he was perfect. Far from it.'

‘Yeah,' I mutter, from where I've sunk down into my coat so that only my eyes are peering out. ‘Whatever.'

Mum sighs and blows her nose. She hates my over-use of slang expressions from American chat shows.

The thing is, she's right. Jay was a nightmare just before he went missing. But now that's all been brushed aside because all we want is for him to come home. Whereas I'm still at home, still getting told off and bossed about and ordered to do homework and tidy my room, and I've got no freedom to go out at night now, thanks to my lovely big brother and his, like,
great
idea of going missing for two years.

When we get home, Dad goes upstairs to his computer, Mum locks herself in the bedroom and sticks her yoga music on and I lie on my bed and stare up at the glow stars for hours. I decide that I'm going to go mad if I don't speak to somebody, so I think about Bindi and then realise it's half past midnight
and way too late for her to still be up. So I reach for my mobile and dial another number.

Adam answers the phone straight away, like he was holding it in his hand.

‘Hey, Lilah. Wassup?'

I can't speak for a moment.

It's because his voice is deep and kind, even after our embarrassing non-date the other week. And I don't hear a lot of that at home at the moment, so whenever anybody's kind to me I start filling up with pathetic girly tears that won't fall down my face, and I feel about six years old.

‘Lilah?' says Adam. ‘Are you still there?'

I nod, which is stupid because he can't see me.

‘Hi,' I manage, in a tiny whisper. ‘Tell me what you're doing.'

Most people would think this weird, but Adam is used to my weirdness.

‘Well,' he says, and I can picture him glancing around his bedroom. ‘Before I answered this call, I was texting a mate. Before that, I was listening to the new Killers album on iTunes. And before that, I was stuffing a doughnut down my gob, and trying to do logarithms. How about you?'

‘Mmm, you know,' I manage. ‘Went down to
the police station. Somebody made a call from Jay's mobile. But they don't reckon it was him.'

I can tell by the silence that Adam's shocked.

‘Shit, Lilah,' he says in the end. ‘I'm so sorry. That must have brought it all back again.'

I'm silent again for a moment. The thing is, nothing ever brings it all back again, because it never went away in the first place.

I can't ever stop thinking about Jay.

And how it was entirely my fault.

I'm too sad to be angry.

The police call us the next day.

They've traced Jay's phone. Some strange bloke had found it in the street and had pressed a dialled number by mistake.

Mum's white with disappointment and Dad's pacing up and down in the kitchen in the manner of one of his lions.

I'm off school for a day because none of us slept a wink the night before.

‘But I don't understand,' says Dad. ‘Why would his phone end up in the street?'

Mum and I are silent.

Whatever the reason, it doesn't sound like something we'd want to know about.

Dad comes upstairs for another Taming Lilah session on a Thursday after school.

I'm already feeling pretty cross, because although Bindi liked her bangles, our friendship is still all cautious and nervy and not like it was before, and I see her whispering with Adam Carter sometimes during break, and I just know that they are discussing me and how annoying I am, and when I see them with their heads bent close together, I go all shivery and get a big pang deep in my stomach.

So I'm up in my bedroom trying to get lost in schoolwork, but as always there's this bad feeling right at the middle of everything I do, like the black bit you have to scrape out from the middle of a clean white potato. I just can't shift it.

Dad taps on my door and comes in without bothering to wait for my reply.

He's wearing a thick black jacket, which is a bit odd, as our house is heated up like a tropical greenhouse due to Mum's inability to tolerate any cold weather at all.

‘How ARE you?' he begins. I poke my tongue out at him and we both laugh a little bit, but then I remember the afternoon I've just had at school and I begin to bang the back of my head against the wall, not really all that hard, but just enough to show Dad that I'm not at my best.

‘That bad, huh?' says Dad. He comes over and sits on the foot of the bed.

‘Well,' he says. ‘When the big boys at the zoo get angry, there are a number of things we try. Firstly there's exercise, like you did last time. And secondly we use something called “the distraction method”.'

I give him a mournful look.

‘I'm so not in the mood for being distracted,' I say. ‘And if you're about to suggest that we play a board game, then forget it.'

My family have this gross love of playing games. I hate them. They're not called ‘bored games' for nothing. Just the tap-tap of the little plastic pieces around the board is enough to get my anger prickles starting off again.

‘It depends what the distraction is, surely?' says Dad. He's got a worrying smirk on his face, like he knows something I don't.

But I'm kind of interested now, and I've stopped banging my head on the wall.

‘What?' I say. ‘Could you just tell me, please? I can't cope with all this mystery stuff.'

Dad puts his hand inside his odd black puffy jacket and pulls something out.