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Y OU TAKE A COUPLE of days off school to recover from your illness. During this time, Bobby’s mum tries to distract you from the lack of familiar surroundings. She puts on films, TV programmes, radio programmes, even lays out some books that might tickle your fancy. Sometimes, she joins in with the diversion tactics – watches the film with you or reads the book on your behalf. She has also taken a couple of days off work. She’s a speech and language therapist, but that can wait. And you’re a smart girl, so school can wait too.
On your third sick day, Bobby’s mum decides you’re well enough to help her around the house. She has a pile of laundry that needs sorting and folding and you can go sort it and fold it with her – that won’t take too much energy. Also, there’s some cooking to attend to. And cleaning too – why don’t you go dust? And gardening as well – why don’t you go rake up some leaves? Afterwards, you can have a nap. You’re still looking a little peaky. You can have a nap and sleep and lie down and watch something inconsequential on the TV.
Through Bobby’s mum, you learn more about Bobby, who she doesn’t refer to as Bobby, but instead ‘your friend’, Bobster, the Bobster, Bobino, or Boberooni.
‘Your friend has asked for Chinese tonight. Do you like Chinese? It’s OK if you don’t. Would you like something plainer? Is your stomach still hurting?’
‘Apparently, Bobster doesn’t like the new geography teacher this year. He says he has a nasal voice. I hope they are being kind to him. Or at least not horrid.’
‘Boberooni will be making his way to PE now, at least according to this timetable. They are doing climbing this term. Can you imagine? He’d better be good, after all the practice he had with you. Do you remember? Couldn’t believe it at the time. What were you guys like?’
On the fourth day, Boberooni’s mum decides you’re well enough to go back to school. She drives you there in her very tall car, dropping Bobby off first then flooring it to yours. What with half-term and your sickness, it feels like ages since you’ve attended to your schooling. You look at your classmates. You swear one or two of them have entered puberty since you last saw them.
In English, the teacher runs through parts of speech.
‘Noun,’ the teacher says, somehow making ‘noun’ sound like it’s got three syllables.
You let out a deep sigh. You wish you were still unwell.
‘Excuse me,’ the teacher says – addressing you. ‘If this is boring, you can get up and teach the class.’ He offers you his pen, gestures to the whiteboard. ‘Go on.’
You blink at him, wondering if he’s serious.
‘Hm?’ the teacher says.
You think about it. ‘No thanks.’ But when you say this, a girl with a squeaky voice takes the heat off you – offers an answer to his previous question. ‘Doing word,’ she answers, incorrectly.
The teacher shakes his head in a forlorn manner. ‘That’s wrong, Olivia. Let’s go through it again.’
In the next half-hour, your cohort finally accepts that nouns are people, places, and things – but is still struggling with the concept of verbs, adverbs, pronouns, adjectives, and articles.
The teacher seems to accept defeat. He says he has just one very important question for you all before you go.
‘I have my list here,’ he says, brandishing a clipboard while enunciating. ‘I have your names written down.’ He pauses for dramatic effect. ‘Next to your names, I’d like to jot down what you’re writing about for your essay. You remember the essay, guys?’
‘Yes,’ a few people say.
‘Now I’m going to go around…’ the teacher points towards the front desks ‘… and ask each of you about your essay. This is so I get an idea of where you’re up to, and when I receive your essay on whatever it is, I am duly prepared. Is that OK?’
‘Yes,’ a few people say again.
‘OK, Marcus. Go. What are you writing about?’
‘Football,’ Marcus says.
‘Thank you, Marcus,’ the teacher says. ‘Aaron?’
‘Football as well, sir,’ Aaron says.
‘Great, Aaron. Jess?’
‘Pogo sticks.’
A few of your classmates laugh.
‘That’s an original one, Jess. Thank you. What about you, Scott?’
‘Football.’
‘Excellent. What about you, Holly?’
‘Ballet.’
‘Super. Callum?’
‘Cooking.’
‘Wow. Mo?’
‘Football.’
‘Great. Jade?’
‘Sumo wrestling.’
‘Ha! Wonderful. Alex?’
‘Football.’
The teacher is fast approaching your row. You start to panic. Whenever you say the words ‘Voynich Manuscript’ to people, they tend to not understand. They always ask you to repeat yourself. Once, when you said ‘Voynich Manuscript’ to your auntie, she said bless you, as if you had just emitted a sneeze.
‘The Voynich Manuscript,’ you say, when the teacher gets around to you.
The teacher regards you carefully, but does not bless you.
‘Can you spell that for me, please?’
‘V-o-y-n-i-c-h. M-a-n-u-s-c-r-i-p-t.’
‘Well, I’ll have to look that one up. Is it your hobby, would you say?’
You gulp. ‘My interest.’
‘Your interest. Excellent. And James, what about you?’
‘Football,’ James says.
The essay is due soon, the teacher reminds you. You should have started by now. It wouldn’t surprise him if some of you had already finished.
That evening, Bobby’s mum says she wants you and Bobby to paint one of her walls. It’s an urgent task, she says. She simply can’t stand the white space that was there before, and doesn’t want to look at it a moment longer.
‘Oh,’ you say, accepting a paintbrush. ‘I might need to do some homework tonight, though.’
‘Sure,’ Bobby’s mum says, handing Bobby one too. ‘But first, you must work on your masterpiece.’
You press the brush bristles with your index finger. ‘My masterpiece is the wall painting?’ you ask.
‘The mural, yes.’
Completing your masterpiece takes all evening. You don’t like the task much. The paint gives off fumes, and you are unsure if what you are doing is any good – if anyone anywhere would ever deem it a masterpiece. Bobby is little to no help. Apparently, he has not inherited his mum’s keen interest in the visual arts.
‘Do you think I should do some more here?’ he asks you.
‘I don’t know,’ you say.
‘What about here?’ he asks you.
‘I still don’t know,’ you say.
Fortunately, Bobby’s mum seems to like what you’ve done. ‘Beautiful,’ she says. ‘You’ve really captured something there, guys.’
You and Bobby look at each other. Your hair has paint in it. His hair is sticking up. Then you look at your attempted mural. You have coated half of the wall in a block orange. Bobby has coated half of the wall in a block green. At the centre, these colours have mixed to create an accidental brown. You stare at it, trying to figure out exactly what you’ve done.
‘What shall we call it?’ Bobby asks you, eventually.
‘Do paintings have to have names?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Bobby’s mum says. ‘That’s Boberooni’s favourite part.’
The green and brown remind you of gardening, the orange of sick. ‘Garden Time,’ you say eventually – deciding not to incorporate the vomit aspect into the title of the mural.
Bobby frowns. ‘That’s not very nice,’ he says.
You raise your eyebrows. ‘No?’
‘No.’
‘Well, what do you want to call it?’
Bobby considers the mural again, regarding it like it’s a thing of complexity.
‘The Next Chapter. A Fresh Beginning. Another New Start. Something like this.’
‘Another New Start,’ Bobby’s mum says. ‘I like that one, Bobino.’
Bobby’s mum musses Bobino’s hair, kisses him on the forehead, then – to your surprise – kisses you on the forehead too. After this, she squooshes you together in a joint hug. It is a big hug. She squeezes you both tightly. It is not till you think you might be literally suffocating that she releases her grip and lets you go.
‘Another New Start,’ she says. ‘Another New Start.’
Further reading:
Yard Work or Hard Work: A Guide to Raking, Hoeing, and More