Chapter 14 #2
It was several minutes before Kaden picked up something and gave a pleased shout. He turned it over to examine it, then handed it to Joe.
“What do you think this is?”
“Er… It’s a rock. An unattractive one. It doesn’t even sparkle.”
Kaden laughed. “It’s a fragment of fossilised whale vertebra. It’s from the Red Crag layer so around two and a half million years old.”
Joe gasped. “Almost as old as—” He’d been going to say my planet.
“As what?”
“The whale’s mother.”
He chuckled. “How do you think I know what it is?”
“The shape. Sort of like a disk and the hole in the centre is for the spinal cord. You’ve found one before.”
Kaden stared. “Have I?” But it wasn’t a question, more an accusation.
“Yes, it’s in the box under your bed.”
“How the fuck do you know that?”
Joe winced. Too much, too fast. “You told me.”
Kaden frowned.
“Is that wood?” Joe blurted, pointing to a long dark strip of striated rock, part covered in sand. “It looks like bark.”
Kaden followed his gaze. “Yes. Good piece.” He took a photo. “Can’t take it home.” He glanced sideways. “So, I’ve talked about this with you?”
Joe nodded. It wouldn’t be good for Kaden to realise Joe had all of his memories, but a few scattered remnants might trigger the ones he’d forgotten.
They walked on.
“You found your favourite fossil here when you were eleven,” Joe said carefully. “A Striatolamia shark tooth.”
Kaden stared at him again, then shook his head, laughing. “You’re terrifying. Have you remembered everything I told you?”
“Yes. I know all your secrets.” Joe tried to make it a joke and luckily, Kaden took it that way.
“I wish I could remember you,” Kaden said quietly. “It’s killing me that I can’t.”
Joe bent, scanning the stones. He wanted to please him, make him happy again. Could he still use enhanced scanning with his vision? He tried and it worked. That could be useful.
A little while later, something dark and triangular caught his eye. He picked it up and showed it Kaden.
“Oh my God!” Kaden gasped. “No way.”
“What is it?”
“A megalodon tooth.” Kaden looked like he might cry. “Do you know how rare…? Joe, it’s insane that you’d pick this up. All these years coming here and I’ve never found anything as fabulous as that. Wow.”
“Megalodon means big tooth,” Joe said.
Kaden laughed, a bright, disbelieving sound. He took a picture. “This came from the largest shark that ever lived. Possibly twenty-four metres long. That’s a great find. Take care of it.”
Joe shook his head. He took Kaden’s hand gently, turning his palm upward, and placed the tooth there.
“I want you to have it,” he said and took a risk. “Call it Joe.”
“That toy in my backpack that I didn’t remember. Didn’t I call that …?”
Joe froze but whatever thought Kaden was edging towards faded. He closed his fingers around it, then hugged Joe.
“Thank you,” he murmured.
The hug was brief, but in its wake, it left a promise neither of them was quite ready to name.
No other find came close to that, though they walked off the beach with pockets full of fossilised wood, small shark teeth and coprolite. Once Joe knew he was picking up dinosaur poop, he gave it all to Kaden. By the time they made it back to the car, both of them were buzzing with adrenaline.
Joe leaned against the door while Kaden dumped the boots and the finds in the back.
As they set off, Kaden asked, “What sort of job do you want to do once you’re able to work?”
“We talked about IT. But I don’t know if I’m good enough.” He might be too good.
“What are you good at?”
“I’m not sure.” Looking after someone. Protecting them. But he couldn’t do that anymore, not in the way he once had. And there was only one person he wanted to look after.
“You said you were like a bodyguard.”
“Yes, but I can’t do that now. Why did you want to make people laugh?” Joe already knew but he wanted to distract him.
“Ah, the big question. I’ve been asked that a lot. My mum thought I was funny. She encouraged me to tell jokes and make people laugh. It made my anxiety shut up for a bit.”
“You were anxious?”
“I wasn’t popular as a kid. I was a bit geeky.
Then having my dad as a teacher at my school was hard.
When I came out as gay in my teens, I dropped even further down the social food chain.
But if you can make a room full of strangers chuckle, suddenly there’s common ground.
Shared understanding. You’re not alone anymore.
I think of my mum in the audience when I perform and she’s so happy. ”
“It’s brave to stand up in front of strangers and hope to strike the right note.”
“Once you’ve stood in front of a sea of blank faces and survived whether they smiled or not, then you can survive anything.”
“Do you want to be famous?”
“Not for stand-up. I just enjoy turning the absurdities of life into something fun and happy. But I would like to be a famous author. Very unlikely to happen, though I am a well-known journalist.”
“How about being a famous fossil hunter?”
“Even less likely. You’re already ahead on that.”
“But I gave the tooth to you.”
“That’s true.” Kaden laughed. “But I didn’t find it so it doesn’t count.”
“I’ll have it back then.”
“Oh no you won’t.”
Joe smiled. Teasing is fun.
They grabbed sandwiches and bottles of water while buying the ingredients for dinner, then ate sitting on a wall with their feet dangling and their shoulders brushing just often enough to feel intentional. It made Joe’s heart soar. He hoped Kaden was feeling the same as him.
“Could you write an article on fossil hunting?” Joe asked.
“Maybe.” Kaden wiped crumbs from his fingers.
Were there fossils everywhere in the world? He’d have to look it up. “Do you like being a freelance journalist?”
“I like working from home, being in charge of my own destiny, not having to commute every morning. I like the variety of work. Different people, different places, different stories. But it can be lonely with no colleagues to chat to while standing by the photocopier, no one to spin ideas off. And editors can be absolute shits. They say they’ll call back and they don’t.
I’ll pitch an idea to someone I’ve worked with for years and they still don’t reply without a lot of reminders.
” Kaden shook his head. “But you have to learn when to push and when to stop.”
“Something I’m also learning,” Joe said.
Kaden glanced at him and held the look. “I’ve had to develop a thick skin, which you’d think would help in stand-up.
I suspect that was why my mum pushed me that way when I was younger.
But people not laughing at something I think is funny, is always hard.
And the way I earn a living means my finances are complicated.
I have to be organised. Keep all receipts.
Note my expenses. Along with chasing payment when someone mysteriously forgets to pay me. At least Alistair is reliable.”
“You could easily write an entertaining piece about fossil hunting.”
Kaden chuckled. “The obsessive searching. The thrill of finding something that died millions of years ago only to stick it in a box under your bed.”
Joe laughed properly then.
“Let’s be honest,” Kaden said. “Ninety-nine percent of finds are—” He paused dramatically, “—rocks.”
“But that one percent…” Joe prompted.
“Makes it all worthwhile. Kids are the best at looking for fossils. They don’t mind getting dirty or wet, they’re happy to crawl everywhere without looking like an idiot, and are genuinely delighted by a pretty stone or a piece of sea glass, or even better, an intact shell.”
“You once found what you thought was a dinosaur egg and it turned out to be dried up dog poop.”
Kaden laughed, then stopped short, staring at Joe. “How are you doing this? How do you know these things? Stuff I haven’t thought about in years? How do you know so much about me when I barely know anything about you?”
Joe shrugged, suddenly very interested in his sandwich wrapper. “You’re interesting. I’m not.”
He knew that answer didn’t satisfy Kaden, but at least he didn’t push.
That evening, Joe and Kaden cooked together. Ratatouille and southern fried chicken. Joe thought it smelled amazing. Luckily Kaden had pointed when he asked to be passed something, so Joe knew what to reach for without having to search his data bank—his memory. He smiled.
“Smells good,” Kaden said. “Garlic and thyme mingled with hot oil and pepper. Mmm.”
The chicken crackled happily in the pan, the vegetables simmered into something colourful, and between the teasing, laughter, and the entirely unnecessary amount of touching by both of them that definitely wasn’t accidental, the meal somehow came together.
Joe was left in charge of not letting anything burn while Kaden went to collect his dad. His instructions were brief. “Stir occasionally.” Joe managed to put out the plates and cutlery before they got back and didn’t burn dinner.
If Charlie was disappointed to see him still there, he didn’t show it and they sat at the table to eat. The meal was delicious. Why couldn’t his planet have food like this? He understood that the cubes were nutritionally balanced but it sucked the pleasure out of eating.
“Look at this,” Kaden said and put the megalodon tooth on the table.
“At last!” Charlie laughed. “Can you stop going there now?”
“No, because Jalis found it. He gave it to me but I’d still like to spot one myself.”
“That’s quite a find. Oh, and you’ll be happy to learn I had the homework in from my Year Sixes.”
Kaden gave him a blank look. “Why will I be happy?”
His dad grimaced. “You told me you were thinking of writing a children’s book about aliens. I said I’d ask them what they’d do if they met one.”
“Okay. What did they say?”
“Generally, there was a consensus that they’d be frozen in fear for a moment or two. Then they’d start to ask questions, which were wide-ranging. Are you friendly? Are you going to eat us? Can you eat our teacher?” Charlie laughed. “I did find that one amusing.”
“Courtesy of Brady Davies?” Kaden asked.
“The very same. They asked Do you lay eggs? Is this a joke? Will you be my friend? Which planet are you from? Would you like a piece of cake? Can I take your picture? Followed by Can I use your phone? Brady again.”
“They weren’t frightened?” Joe asked.
“A couple said they’d run away screaming.
We had an interesting discussion and the overall opinion was that their reaction probably depended on what the alien looked like.
I think children are braver and more trusting than adults, and also very kind.
Many of my class wanted to ask it to play with them.
Then they argued about what game they should play. ”
“Whereas adults would call in the armed forces and we’d shoot first, ask questions later,” Kaden said.
Charlie reached back to grab his bag, then put a pile of drawings on the granite. “It was interesting to see what they thought aliens might look like compared to them.”
Joe and Kaden looked through them together.
“It’s not always possible to tell which is the alien,” Charlie said, chuckling. “Interestingly, only one child made the alien considerably smaller than himself.”
“Brady again?” Kaden asked.
“Yes. He opted for something rather like an ant.”
“Would either of you run from these?” Joe asked.
“I wish I could run from the kids sometimes.” Charlie laughed.
“Are you kidding?” Kaden said. “I’m not going to run from the interview of the century. Assuming there’s some ability to translate.”
Charlie pushed his empty plate away. “I suppose I’d wait to see what the alien said to me, bearing in mind that any alien with the technology to cross the stars probably isn’t here by accident. If they wanted to hurt us, they wouldn’t need to knock first.”
Kaden chuckled. “So you’d invite them in for cake too?”
Charlie smiled. “Of course. You learn more about someone over a slice of cake than across the sights of a weapon.”
“It would have to be chocolate cake,” Joe said.
Both Charlie and Kaden laughed at that.
Kaden and Charlie had a game of chess after dinner and Joe sat next to Kaden.
He knew about chess, knew Kaden liked playing with his dad.
Joe watched carefully. Chess wasn’t a matter of luck but strategy and Joe had spotted that Kaden had already made an error.
Then he made another and the game was lost.
“Four moves back you should have moved your bishop and not your rook,” Joe said.
Kaden gaped at him.
“He’s right,” Charlie said. “Like a game, Jalis?”
“Yes, please.”
Joe played fast. He wished Charlie played fast too but he didn’t. It made no difference. Joe won all four games.
“Wow,” Kaden said. “Who taught you to play?”
“You two did.” Joe curled his toes in his shoes. I shouldn’t have said that.
Charlie laughed. “Oh dear. I think you should be teaching Kaden.”
They put the chess set away and watched something about Pompeii on the TV. Joe was fascinated. He’d love to go there and wondered if he’d ever get the chance.
Finally, Kaden pushed to his feet. “Time for bed. I’m heading back to London tomorrow. I need my laptop. There might be things I’m supposed to have done or should be doing. I’ll take Jalis with me. He needs to claim asylum.”
Charlie looked between them and Joe could see he wasn’t happy, but he didn’t say anything. Joe understood Charlie’s desperation that nothing happen to his son, that Joe not hurt him. I won’t.
The worst had already happened to Kaden. An alien had forced its way into his body, then forced its way out and Joe still wasn’t sure how Kaden would react when he remembered that. But Joe couldn’t bear the idea of a life without him.