Chapter 16 – Simo
October comes
claws at the skin
strips branches of their leaves
till only roots remain
Half-hidden from sight beneath Lorca’s poetry collection is my notebook, sketches of daisies littering the pages. Words fill the spaces between the flowers, drawn in sharp black lines that make them look more like weeds with angry edges.
November nears
draws light from skies
the sun out of the sea
till only roots remain
Dad’s daisies have reduced in number and colour. The few that are left in the garden have their heads hanging, slowly giving up on the hope of catching sunlight. I stare out at them a lot from my window on the first floor.
daisies grow
and daisies die
and daisies grow again
life decays
and people go
and only grief remains
Sat on my desk, I should be focusing on homework, but instead I leaf through the collection of Lorca’s poems, my mind elsewhere.
Elsewhere being Luca, who has disappeared into himself, like he too is hiding from the cold.
Something happened at that family lunch, but he won’t say what.
I’m half convinced that I’ve done something to upset him, and the only thing that reassures me is the fact that today, like so many days, he sits huddled at the foot of my bed.
Sometimes he asks me to read, but mostly he scrolls and keeps his thoughts to himself.
He’s starting to become an enigma, almost like Lorca’s poems.
I fear I might have to disappoint Tío Andrés; the kinship he speaks of is lost in translation.
Maybe it’s the language barrier, and on top of that poetry isn’t known for being straightforward and easy to interpret.
But even when I find English versions, the meaning escapes me.
There’s a whole lot of symbolism, talk of the moon and all kinds of flowers, turned into riddles.
I wish I could copy some of his verses into my notebook, give my head a break from being haunted by Spanish sonnets, but I can’t do it with Luca present.
It would be like handing him a key to my mind and letting him roam free.
What I need is a change of scenery. I’ve stared at the flowers with their drooping heads for too long. I shut the book of poems away in the desk drawer, careful to hide the notebook beneath it.
‘We should see what they’re showing tonight,’ I say into the silence.
Luca throws me one of those befuddled looks that tell me he was worlds away and hasn’t caught up to reality.
I hand him my phone. When he sees the picture of the noticeboard, he stills.
I know he also feels the whiplash of the memory of that one message from a month ago, but this week’s announcement is as innocent as they come:
JOIN THE LOMBARD
FILM FESTIVAL!
‘But they show the same stuff every year,’ Luca protests.
To combat the antisocial attitude that creeps into town with the autumn weather, the council screens a film each night for a week, in the hopes of drawing us out of our homes.
Lombard Film Festival isn’t exactly Cannes, so they mostly replay old classics and whatever blockbuster has finally become affordable, months after it released in city cinemas.
‘Do you have a better plan?’ I ask. ‘Or are we spending another night stuck inside on our phones?’ He pouts, knowing I’m right. ‘You like films. And for once you’ll get to watch one on a screen that’s bigger than the palm of your hand.’
‘Fine,’ Luca says, and hands back my phone. As it moves from his hand to mine, his gaze lingers on my fingers. They have healed since the incident in the library, but he hasn’t forgotten, and neither have I. Sometimes I still feel a twinge of pain, and it serves as a reminder.
For a couple of weeks I contemplated the dried blood beneath my fingernails, tried to let it scab over and heal without reopening the wounds.
By the time the crust fell off, revealing a layer of new pink skin, I’d come to a realisation.
People keep telling me how I feel, and in trying to prove them wrong, I’m pushing away the person who least deserves it.
I hurt myself, then tried to shift the pain on to him so I wouldn’t have to bear it alone.
All because of a heart carved into a bookshelf.
Some letters on a noticeboard. As much as it pisses me off, this expectation that we’ll turn into a couple sooner or later, I can’t let it change who we are.
Ever since, I’ve been trying to figure out how to remain the Simo he knows, whatever people think.
No more pushing Luca away, that much is clear. But beyond that? I’m not sure.
We arrive at the town hall, our shoes damp, rain dripping on to the colourless rug. Even before we reach the auditorium, I fear the worst. There are kids everywhere, holding boxes of sweets or chasing each other through the hallway.
‘Of course we picked the day they’re showing a children’s film,’ Luca says, still pouting.
Careful not to trample any toddlers, we reach the corkboard displaying the schedule.
I barely register the film title – Coco – before my eyes snag on something else.
Ice settles into my bones. I try to steer Luca towards the auditorium, but he turns rigid beneath my touch.
He has seen what I see. His expression jumps from surprise to confusion and before morphing into a stiff blankness.
The flyer is a pale pink and almost blank, except for three little words: Spread the love! Across the bottom, a row of tear-off strips, each with the drawing of a heart enclosing our initials.
For several suspended breaths, neither of us moves. When my heart slams back into my chest, I reach out and tear the whole sheet off. Though I’m shaking on the inside, I meet Luca’s eyes, fold the paper up as if it’s nothing but a flea-market announcement and slide it into my pocket.
‘Let’s just enjoy the film, yeah?’ I say, and force him ahead of me, into the auditorium.
What he can’t see is how I press my thumbnail into the tender flesh that has only just healed, trying to remind myself that I won’t let this break me.
We find seats at the very back, and for the next fifteen minutes I scan the room, to avoid looking at Luca.
I spot Joni with a man I assume to be her son, but apart from a gaggle of parents and the town council, they’re the only adults.
A few rows ahead, Louise is chatting to Jacob.
Mairi and her brothers are being ordered around by Councillor Justine, their mother, while Heloise observes the crowd with the gaze of a schoolmistress who despises kids.
When the lights dim, I realise that just because the flyer was hung in the hallway, that doesn’t mean that the person who put it up is in the room right now.
Anyone can walk into the town hall, tack something up and leave again unnoticed.
‘I just want you to know,’ Luca whispers, ‘the posters and hearts and all that, none of it matters. They can say what they want about us, but I only care about you. About us.’
Tension trickles out of my body, and the ache in my jaw tells me I’ve been grinding my teeth. I relax into the seat and, rather than suppressing the impulse, I cover his hand with mine, although just for a second. It might look like I’m reassuring him, when really I’m the one seeking comfort.
Two hours later, I arrive home, without Luca.
It took me a good thirty minutes to get out of my head and focus on the screen.
And even then, I struggled to keep up. I was expecting a silly animated adventure, not an exploration of death and grief.
Despite the promise to keep my best friend close, Hamza is on my mind.
I need time to myself, time to sit with my thoughts, without distractions.
My shoes are so sodden they make a squelching sound when I remove them. I feel just as drenched, weighed down by memories of my brother. I wonder what he would make of the noticeboard and the love hearts. And not for the first time, I wonder what he’d make of Luca. Not that I’ll ever find out.
‘Simo, come here for a moment.’ Mum calls from the lounge.
‘I’ve got homework,’ I call back, and though it’s an obvious excuse to get out of a conversation, there’s a paper on Jane Austen waiting to be written.
She appears in the doorway and frowns at the dirt I’ve trailed in. ‘It won’t take long.’
‘Mum, I really don’t—’
‘It’s important, Simo. If you could join me and your dad in the lounge, we need to talk to you about something.’
She withdraws, and red warning lights go off in my head.
She didn’t comment on my trainers muddying the hall, and now she and Dad want to sit me down and talk?
I stand on the landing, rendered immobile by a sense of foreboding.
They never want to talk, so this can only be about one thing. Or one person.
‘Simo?’ Mum calls, leaving me no choice but to follow her into the lounge.
As I enter and see my parents sat side by side on the sofa like a panel of judges, I want to turn and run.
It looks as if they’ve finally had enough of the rumours, the gossip about me and Luca, and refuse to keep turning a blind eye.
If that’s what this is about, I don’t have answers.
I barely understand my own feelings, so how can I give them clarity?
‘Don’t look so stricken,’ Dad says through his beard. ‘Unless you’ve committed a crime, there’s no need to worry.’
‘O-OK,’ I say.
Mum narrows her eyes at me. ‘You haven’t committed a crime, have you?’
‘No!’ I insist. ‘Just tell me what this is about.’
Mum doesn’t take her eyes off me, but she pats Dad’s knee, prompting him to speak.
‘We’re going back to Granada. All of us, together.’
A wave of relief washes over me, followed by another, bigger rush of fear.
‘I’m not moving,’ I force out through gritted teeth. If this is their strategy to put an end to Luca’s and my friendship, they can bite me. I won’t let them uproot me and drop me several countries away from him.
‘Moving?’ Mum asks. ‘Nobody’s moving.’
‘It’s only for a couple of weeks, during the Christmas holidays. It’s been so long since we’ve all gone together.’
I stare into Dad’s wide, bushy face, his dark beard peppered with streaks of grey.
‘We thought you’d like the idea. Did you not enjoy yourself there?’ Mum speaks into my silence.
‘No, I loved it. I – I’d love to go again.’
‘Good,’ Dad hums. ‘Because it took a lot of convincing to get your mum on board. Hates flying.’ He chuckles but stops when Mum sends him a stern look.
‘So we’re all going together?’ I ask, trying to comprehend. We’re not moving. Luca and I aren’t being separated. In fact, this isn’t about me at all. I finally allow myself to breathe.
We haven’t been on a family holiday since before Hamza died, and I barely remember that time. Happy memories have a habit of spoiling when the person you share them with is gone. Remembering becomes painful, and so they fall into disuse and begin to fade.
‘It’ll be just you, your dad and me,’ Mum explains. ‘Luca won’t be joining this time, but it’s only two weeks. You’ll survive the time apart.’
There it is again, that weird tone she uses when speaking about Luca.
It’s so subtle I’m never sure it’s there.
In another universe where I’m less of a coward, I’d challenge her on it.
But when she leans back, signifying that I’m free to go, I’m so relieved to have escaped a confrontation that I decide it’s wisest to bolt.
In my room, I sink on to the bed. My hand automatically glides beneath the pillow, finding only air where the notebook used to be.
Two fear-induced seconds later, I remember its new location and retrieve it from the desk drawer, my heart beating hard with relief.
I don’t want to imagine the reaction if my parents opened the book, but something else is what’s upsetting me, and I’m trying to figure out the source of my unease.
I take the conversation with my parents apart, or, to be precise, what I thought the conversation was going to be.
As I turn the tattered pages, something becomes obvious: Luca is everywhere.
He’s lyrics from songs I listen to on repeat and quotes from children’s books, copied out in my handwriting.
He’s fractured attempts at writing poetry, he’s poems stolen from better writers.
He’s a splatter of apple blossoms covering a full spread. He’s unmissable, on every page.
Being confronted with the possibility of losing Luca had me about ready to start a war, guns blazing.
I can no longer ignore that my feelings for him, tangled as they are by ten years of friendship with few days spent apart, go beyond loyalty.
They’re not purely platonic, and perhaps they haven’t been for a while.
It’s only taken so long for my brain to catch up with my heart.
I try to sit with this admission and not think about its implications. What this means for us, I can’t tell.
My eyes stray to my bookshelf and the novels stacked there.
Thousands of pages on matters of love and all that makes us human, and yet there isn’t one that will help me out of this situation.
I get up and pull the photo album from the top shelf.
It’s at moments like these that I feel Hamza’s absence the most. He was four years older, and in the eyes of little Simo, wiser by an eternity.
The album starts predictably, with an ultrasound, followed by images of my tiny mum with a huge belly.
My favourite picture is from my first day of school, not because I’m the centre of attention, but because Hamza looks so proud to be my big brother.
The picture that hurts the most, the last one he ever appears in, was taken a few weeks after his tenth birthday.
Hamza is outside, sat on the lawn of what must be the backyard of our old house.
His face is turned away from the camera, and he closely examines something in the grass, a flower maybe, or a ladybird.
There’s no point in wondering what caught his attention, but I always do.
The album ends on a cliffhanger, a loose thread that won’t be resolved.
Maybe Hamza sucked just as much at feelings as me.
But having him listen as I talked about Luca would have helped, even if he could offer little in terms of advice.
Without thinking, I pull the photograph of us on my first school day from beneath the protective film.
The album goes back on the shelf, but the picture remains propped up on my desk.
Hamza doesn’t deserve to be hidden away.
Like the daisies in the front yard, he should be seen.