Free Alice and the Fly by James Rice

of Them . He told me to maintain the peaceful state of mind I’d created stroking my Safety Animal. Mum was still smiling.
    Dr Filburn placed the plastic one of Them on his desk. He asked if I was OK with the plastic one of Them on his desk and I nodded. He told me to close my eyes and imagine my animal. When he asked me to open them again the plastic one of Them had moved across the desk, a little closer to me. He asked if I was still OK. I nodded again. He told me to close my eyes again.
    This continued until the little plastic one of Them was perched right in front of me. Then Dr Filburn lifted the plastic one of Them and placed it in the palm of my hand. He asked if I still felt scared. I wanted to explain that I’d never been scared of the little plastic one of Them because it was plastic and right at the start I could have just walked over and picked it up, Safety Animal or no Safety Animal. Instead I just shook my head. Dr Filburn nodded and left the room again.
    He returned with a jar. Before the lid was even off I was clutching the leather and starting to fit. Everything went cold and dark. Mum was screaming. That was the day I bit the hole through my tongue. I never saw Dr Filburn again. I remember how angry he was when I bled all over his comfy white chair.
    But anyway, they’re not real. I guess that’s the point. That’s what I have to remember.
    They’re just Metaphorical Phantoms.
    They’re not real.

04/12
    It hurts because you are still there and I know you are there and I don’t know how to take you away. And it’s not your fault but you could have come to school. You could have to come to school anyway and just worn your glasses and nobody would have known and I would have walked you home and everything would be the same.
    But nothing is the same.
    And it was hard for me. I waited for you. At 08:18 I was pressed against the gate, holding my breath, watching your bus arrive. I was examining each Pitt kid as they stumbled from the steps. By the time the last kid had departed and the bus had pulled away I’d nearly forgotten how to breathe.
    And I waited again, at lunch, in the library, staking out the hole in the hedge. But Angela Hargrove crawled out through it alone and returned, an hour later, still alone.
    And all I could think about was you. The lack of you.
    So at 15:30 when the final bell rang I waited one more time, in my usual waiting-place, with the ducks. I waited for the 17:32. I guess some part of me still expected to see you, shivering at the bus stop outside the Prancing Horse, but you hadn’t gone to work either.
    But I stayed on our bus. I rode it all the way out to the Pitt. I closed my eyes and pictured your sleeping face in the driver’s mirror. I told myself you were OK. You were fine. You were at home. You had not been hit by a bus. You had not been attacked by a gang in the Pitt. You were not at the hospital having contracted cancer from all that smoking and you were not going to die like Andrew Wilt, shaky and milky and bald. I got off at our usual stop, walked our usual route. I watched my feet. That way I could pretend you were up ahead of me. I could imagine the click of your heels on the pavement. I could even sniff for your cigarette – I swear at one point I could even smell it. But you seemed further ahead than usual. I couldn’t keep up with you. Every time I lifted my head you’d disappear again and I’d be alone again and in the end I started to run, up all the dark and empty streets, run with the cold air biting my face.
    By the time I reached your house I was panting. I sat on the wall opposite. The air was cold and stung the hole in my tongue. I focused on your red and peeling door. Your curtains were drawn. Your father’s car sat outside, rusted browny-green, its backseats packed with Hampton’s cardboard boxes. I could hear a sound, a voice. Canned laughter.
    Your house backs onto Crossgrove Park. I hurried across the field, counting the houses till I