Free The Bubble Boy by Stewart Foster Page A

just another
dream.
    I swallow. Amir does the same.
    ‘I sorry,’ he says.
    ‘It’s okay. Do you have a picture of them?’
    ‘No. I don’t need one. It’s like the letters in
Countdown
. I see them all in here.’ He taps the side of his head. ‘But maybe I’ll bring you one to show
you one day.’
    I nod and look at the TV. I don’t see the picture or hear the sound. I wish I had pictures of my family in my head but all I have is a pain in my chest and tummy. I’ve seen a few
documentaries where people talk about losing someone, but they’re all older than me. They say things like, ‘it’s hard’, that ‘the pain never goes away completely, but
it does get easier in time’. But I’m eleven now, and it doesn’t get easier for me. I wish when I hear the word ‘orphan’ that my ribs didn’t squeeze my heart. I
wish I was like Amir. I wish I had a family. All I have is me and Beth. I’ll always want Beth here with me, I just wish Mum and Dad could be too.
    I lean over, open a drawer and take out a photo to show Amir. ‘It’s me, Mum and Dad, and Beth.’
    Amir holds the edge of the photograph between his fingers and smiles. ‘Everyone looks so happy. How old were you?’
    ‘Six.’
    Amir nods and looks at the picture again. I’m sat up on the middle of my bed. Mum and Dad are sat either side and Beth is knelt up behind me. I don’t really remember the day, only
what Beth’s told me. She says it wasn’t a special day like Christmas or any of our birthdays. It was just a day of the week when they all came to see me. The photo was taken in the same
room as I’m in now. I’ve never been moved out of this room, because it was built specially for me. I had posters of Transformers on the walls then, and my bed was smaller, and the
monitors were bigger and grey, not white. Sometimes when I look at the photograph I can hear them talking. Mum looks and sounds like Beth, only older, and Dad looks and talks like Frank Lampard.
Beth talks to Mum about school and what subjects she needs to take in sixth form. I talk to Dad about football. I tell him I’m sorry but even though he does look like Frank I support Arsenal.
Dad says he doesn’t mind, he likes José Mourinho. I look at Dad smiling in the picture. I wonder if he knows that José Mourinho left Chelsea and then came back again, that when
he came back he let Lampard go and now Frank’s scoring goals for Man City. I’ll tell him out loud one day, when Amir isn’t here.
    Amir hands me the picture and I put it back in the drawer. When I turn round he’s looking at his watch.
    ‘I know,’ I say. ‘You have to go.’
    ‘Sorry.’
    I get up and walk over to the window. The traffic lights change from red to green. The drilling has stopped and the workmen have gone home. I look across the rooftops and watch the planes come
and go into Heathrow. Hundreds of them fly every day and night. Sometimes they fly so close that I think they’ll crash into each other and explode. But the planes never touch each other. The
people in the control towers make sure they don’t do that. I wonder if there’s a person in a control tower somewhere controlling my life. Maybe he sits there watching me on a screen
deciding what will happen to me next. Maybe that’s what God does. He watches me from a control tower. I don’t know if God is real, but if he is why does he make me live in a bubble? And
why wasn’t he in the control tower directing the traffic the day Mum and Dad had their accident?
    My laptop beeps behind me. I smile. I know it’ll be Henry. I feel really tired but so much has happened in both our lives today that we have to talk.
    I pick up my laptop and sit down on my bed.
    Hey Joe
20:08
Hi Henry
20:08
How’s the alien?
20:08
He’s not an alien. He just believes in them.
And I like him.
20:08
So you’re not scared then?
20:09
No. He’s funny. He’s getting me Sky TV.
20:09
Sky?
20:10
Satellite.
20:10
Oh, what about the TV