Jay, Lizzie and the Tale of the Stairs Read online

  Chapter 6

  Just What is Real?

  When Dad called me from the bottom of the stairs the next morning my eyes snapped open like football pitch floodlights. I scrambled to turn over in bed to examine the spot where I thought the girl had been the other night.

  The swivel chair by my computer was facing my way. And it was empty.

  I stared at the walls for what seemed like ages listening to Dad crashing around downstairs. I was certain that she had been real. As real as can be anyway.

  After a while I saw Mum. Well, she wasn’t really there. It was just a memory. She was sat on my swivel chair like - what was her name? – “Izzi?” “Busy?" “Lizzie”, that was it. Like Lizzie had been the night before last. Mum wasn’t small like Lizzie but she was deep in thought. Frowning. ‘Growling’ Dad called it. Mum was reading my attempt at maths homework. Couldn’t make head-nor-tail of it. Had closed the tatty exercise book. The book I had scribbled all over. She had rubbed her brow with her free hand and gently shaken her head. She had been disappointed. Girls can be scary. Mum had scared me then because I hadn’t known what to expect and I had been cross with myself because she was cross with me. Beth did that too. But I wasn’t scared of Dad. I just wanted to prove him wrong.

  But Mum sat on my swivel chair was only a thought. Not real. A moment in time. Caught and developed on the film inside my head.

  I tried to picture what Mum was doing right now. Was she up and about? Was she enjoying a cup of tea, a read of the paper and the early morning sunshine? Or was she inside that big machine again or having some of those injections that made her sick?

  Dad was bellowing from the bottom of the stairs.

  “Jay! Are you better? Am I gonna have to phone in sick for the both of us?”

  “No. I’m OK. I’m getting up now.”

  “Well get a bloody move on sunshine.”

  I miss my Mum.

  The blue sky didn’t stay long.

  As I hurried to school light grey clouds whispered across the sun without me seeing. Just one or two at first but then more and more until there was very little sunshine at all.

  All this happened in about ten minutes. I know. I timed it on my watch.

  I met Kyle outside the newsagents on Barten Street as usual.

  “Feeling better?” he asked me rummaging around in his bag for chocolate.

  “Yeah, a little bit.”

  “Well, you better be fit ‘cause we’ve got college sports all day.”

  This was brilliant news. This meant the different colleges at school would compete against each other in all different sorts of sports. But then I panicked.

  “Have they picked me for football? Did they know I was coming back today?”

  Kyle knew that I liked football.

  “Yeah. Keiren picked you for defence.”

  “Defence? I hate being in bloody defence!”

  “Tough.”

  Being in defence wasn’t what I wanted. I was a natural goal-scorer. That I hadn’t scored many goals this season was out of the question. But, like a shower in the morning, I was flooded with relief that I didn’t have to sit through Maths or English.

  As we walked to school Kyle kept looking at me out of the corner of his eye, looking at me like I might suddenly try and grab his lunch off him or something. Strange. After the other night I did feel kind of different. Like all this wasn’t real.

  Even the normal stuff.

  I searched for Beth amongst the students as we approached the school gates but I couldn’t see her.

  It started to rain as soon as we had got changed into our kit. Kylie Smith and one of her friends walked by and told us the football was off. Her friend was a skinny girl with scraggly straw-coloured hair who was chewing gum like a tiger gnawing at an antelope leg. We didn’t believe her and went outside anyway. No sooner had we caught sight of the green of the football field than we saw Mr Pegg. He was the head of PE.

  “Baack! Baack!” He was shouting from a distance and flapping his arms at us. You would have thought we were some sort of ghostly football team coming to get him.

  Everybody was thrown into confusion. This is always the case when plans are changed at school at the last moment and about twenty minutes later we were all sat waiting in teams of five beside the touchline in the sports hall. I would still get my game of football, even if it was five-a-side.

  I waited across the road for Beth at the end of the day. I was craning my neck in an attempt to see her but she found me first.

  “You looking for me,” she said and dug her forefinger into my side.

  “Aw!” She had surprised me and made me jump and hurt me at the same time. “That hurt. Bloody hell, Beth.”

  All Beth did was giggle. I was a bit annoyed. I didn’t like being made fun of. Especially from a girl. She suddenly turned defensive and folded her arms across her chest. She looked stern.

  “Grumpy. What’s wrong with you?”

  “That hurt,” I said again feeling under my school shirt for scratches. “You’ve got sharp nails.”

  “God, you can be such a wimp sometimes.” She turned to go, leaving me fumbling for my bag at my feet. I jogged the few yards to catch her up. My shirt was un-tucked, was poking out from under my school sweater.

  “Hang on, Beth,” I sighed as I got near. “I need to talk to you.”

  The change of subject and the fact that I needed something from her, her girlie advice, cleared the air. But we walked in silence for a few seconds as 3.15 life moved around us. Then we talked about school for a bit until we turned off of the main road and into a terraced side street. There was less traffic here. It was quieter. It had also taken me this long to organise my thoughts and work out exactly how I was going to tell Beth about my ghost. I wasn’t sure how she’d react after the floorboard fiasco.

  I needn’t have worried. Beth, as always, beat me to it.

  “I was wondering. Have you heard any of your voices lately?” she asked out of the blue.

  “Well, yes. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Really?” She seemed really concerned.

  “You see, there’s been something else. Something else has happened.”

  In the end I just told her.

  “I’ve seen a ghost.”

  Beth stopped but it took a couple of paces for me to slow down. I looked back at her. She had her head cocked slightly to one side and I saw the traces of a smile.

  “You’re kidding?”

  “No. I’m not. The other night I woke up and found a little girl at the end of my bed who said she lived in my house and that she could travel through time and she spoke with an accent and…”

  “You’re not serious?” Beth started walking again.

  “No, I mean yes. I am serious. She sat and talked to me for ages.”

  “What did she say?” Beth seemed to be taking all this really well. “Why did she want to speak to you?”

  “She said her name was Elizabeth. Or Lizzie for short. She said she needed my help for something.”

  Beth stayed quiet as I told her how she said that she could do things like make my Dad not hear me if I shouted out and how she seemed to walk down through the floor when she left. It wasn’t long before we came to the point where we would both go different ways. Beth would head to the quiet trees and leaves of Berkley. I would make my way through the graffiti in the park to the noise of Shad Hill. Again we stopped and Beth looked at me for ages. Her eyes moved from left to right as she searched mine.

  “Jay. Are you OK?”

  I wasn’t expecting this.

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “Well, what did the doctor actually say?”

  I knew what she meant. What she was driving at. I couldn’t believe she thought I was making this up, that I was mental or something. I felt stupid and realised that what I had said must have sounded stupid too. If I didn’t know it was true I wouldn’t have believed it either.

  “I haven�
�t been to the doctor yet.”

  I was red with embarrassment and anger. Not at Beth but at myself for thinking she’d believe me.

  “Look,” I mumbled, “I know how it sounds. But it’s true.” I turned to go. “I’ll probably see you tomorrow.”

  Then I hurried in the direction of my house with its voices and little girl ghost and I knew that Beth was already making a mental list of who to get in touch with and break the newest of news…

  “Jay Webber is waay out in space.”