Junk - Melvin Burgess [55]
Even he doesn’t tell his mum everything. He made us all swear not to tell her about the heroin. She’d have blown her lid. A lot of people can’t handle junk. You have to be special to be able to use it.
Anyway, he was always on and on at me to get in touch with my mum, and so were Lily and Tar. I said, ‘I just know it’ll be horrible, they’ll make me hate them, I know it.’ But they kept on and on. So in the end I did. They went round with me to a telephone booth to back me up.
I got Dad.
‘Gemma, is that you?’
I was full of it to start with. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me how I am, then?’ I said. I was grinning at Rob and he was nodding. This was about two, three weeks after I met them.
My dad said, ‘Is that you?’ again. He sounded like a little grey man.
I said, ‘Yeah, it’s me, all right. How are you, Dad?’
‘Gemma, Gemma,’ he said. He was weird. He sounded…
Lily pushed her face into mine. ‘He’s scared of you,’ she hissed.
I thought, Wow! And I knew it was true. He sounded like a little boy stuck outside the headmaster’s office. I could have whooped because I knew that whatever spell he had over me was broken for sure. But I didn’t want to be mean to him. I stared at the phone and licked my lips, then I said, ‘Yeah, it’s all right, Dad. It’s nice to talk to you.’ Pause. ‘How’s Mum?’
‘Gemma. She’s worried sick. We both are. Why didn’t you ring? You could have rung us any time.’
‘Don’t get at me, Dad, I’m doing my best,’ I said. ‘Is Mum there?’ I didn’t want to start talking about what he thought I should have done.
‘We love you, Gemma.’
‘Dad…’
‘I know we made mistakes but we both love you, you know that, don’t you?’
That shocked me. I was embarrassed because… I Love you. I don’t ever remember him saying that to me and now that he was saying it he sounded so broken and beat up. But it made me angry, too, because it was like, you know, a trap? I mean, they’d covered me in shit and now I was out of their control it was, I love you…
He could have said that any time before.
‘Look, Dad, just don’t, just don’t start on me. I’m not coming back. I’m having a good time.’
‘Gemma, you’re fourteen years old…’ Then I heard sounds over the phone and I thought I heard Mum’s voice.
‘Is that Mum? Can I have a talk to her?’
I could hear her in the background. She was saying, ‘Grel? Grel? Is that her, Grel?’ She always called him Grel, God knows why. His name’s Andrew.
He said, ‘Just a minute.’ Then to me, ‘Gemma, why are you doing this? Are you punishing us? Don’t you think you’ve done enough?’
I could have laughed. He didn’t have a clue. Punishing him! That was his scene. I wasn’t doing anything to him. I didn’t have to.
‘I’m just having a good time, it’s nothing to do with you any more,’ I told him.
‘I think it is something to do with us, Gemma,’ he said. ‘And I think it’s time you stopped this. Do you realise the upset you’ve caused your poor mother?’
I was getting upset. First it was loving me. Then it was what I was doing to him, now it was what I was doing to Mum. I put my hand over the mouthpiece. ‘I don’t think I can take this,’ I said.
‘Stay cool, stay cool,’ Rob was saying.
Lily said, ‘You’re doing great, Gemma, you’re doing beautiful.’
I could hear my mum on the phone saying, ‘What’s she saying, Grel? What’s she saying?’
‘Look, just let me talk to her, will you?’ I said.
He said, ‘What’s going on, have you got someone with you?’
‘Never mind that, can I have Mum now?’
‘She’s been worried sick, ringing up the police, ringing up the papers and not a word from you, Gemma. Not a word in four weeks…’
He was really getting going. I could hear Mum behind him trying to get to the phone but he wasn’t having it.
‘She’s done everything for you, you might at least think of her…’ And I was really beginning to get mad because he wouldn’t let me speak to my mum. He was only going on like that just because she was in the room. He always felt he had to act up for her.
Then