KEY SCENE 1

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Chapter 25: A Note

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Mrs Marl was handing back the Life Writing homework. To everyone who had a life, anyway. Conor just sat at his desk, chin in hand, looking at the clock. It was still two and a half hours until 12.07. Not that it would probably matter. He was beginning to think the monster was gone for good.

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Someone else who wouldn’t talk to him, then.

 

“Hey,” he heard, whispered in his general vicinity. Making fun of him no doubt. Look at Conor O’Malley, just sitting there like a lump. What a freak.

 

“Hey,” he heard again, this time more insistent.

 

He realized it was someone whispering to him.

 

Lily was sitting across the aisle, where she’d sat throughout all the years they’d been in school together. She kept looking up at Mrs Marl, but her fingers were slyly holding out a note.

 

A note for Conor.

 

“Take it,” she whispered out of the side of her mouth, gesturing with the note.

 

Conor looked to see if Mrs Marl was watching, but she was too busy expressing mild disappointment that Sully’s life had an awfully close resemblance to a particular insect-based superhero. Conor reached across the aisle and took the note.

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It was folded what seemed like a couple of hundred times and getting it open was like untying a knot. He gave Lily an irritated look, but she was still pretending to watch the teacher.

 

Conor flattened the note on his desk and read it. For all the folding, it was only four lines long.

Four lines, and the world went quiet.

 

– • –

 

I’m sorry for telling everyone about your mum, read the first line.

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I miss being your friend, read the second.

 

Are you okay? read the third.

 

I see you, read the fourth, with the I underlined about a hundred times.

 

He read it again. And again.

 

He looked back over to Lily, who was busy receiving all kinds of praise from Mrs Marl, but he could see that she was blushing furiously and not just because of what Mrs Marl was saying.

 

Mrs Marl moved on, passing lightly over Conor.

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When she was gone, Lily looked at him. Looked him right in the eye.

 

And she was right. She saw him, really saw him.

 

He had to swallow before he could speak.

 

“Lily–” he started to say, but the door to the classroom opened and the school secretary entered, beckoning to Mrs Marl and whispering something to her.

 

They both turned to look at Conor.

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KEY SCENE 2

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Chapter 26: 100 Years

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He pushed open the door, fearing the worst.

 

But his mum was awake, her bed in its sitting-up position. What’s more, she was smiling, and for a second, Conor’s heart leapt. The treatment must have worked. The yew tree had healed her. The monster had done it–

 

Then he saw that the smile didn’t match her eyes. She was happy to see him, but she was frightened, too. And sad. And more tired than he’d ever seen her, which was saying something.

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And they wouldn’t have pulled him out of school to tell him she was feeling a little bit better.

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“Hi, son,” she said, and when she said it, her eyes filled and he could hear the thickness in her voice.

 

Conor could feel himself slowly starting to get very, very angry.

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“Come here,” she said, tapping the bedcovers next to her.

 

He didn’t sit there, though, slumping instead in a chair next to her bed.

 

“How’re you doing, sweetheart?” she asked, her voice faint, her breath even shakier than it had been yesterday. There seemed to be more tubes invading her today, giving her medicines and air and who knew what else? She wasn’t wearing a scarf and her head was bare and white in the room’s fluorescent lights. Conor felt an almost irresistible urge to find something to cover it, protect it, before anyone saw how vulnerable it was.

 

“What’s going on?” he asked. “Why did Grandma get me out of school?”

 

“I wanted to see you,” she said, “and the way the morphine’s been sending me off to Cloud Cuckoo Land, I didn’t know if I’d have the chance later.”

 

Conor crossed his arms tightly in front of himself. “You’re awake in the evenings sometimes,” he said. “You could have seen me tonight.”

 

He knew he was asking a question. He knew she knew it, too.

 

And so he knew when she spoke again that she was giving him an answer.

 

“I wanted to see you now, Conor,” she said, and again her voice was thick and her eyes were wet.

 

“This is the talk, isn’t it?” Conor said, far more sharply than he’d wanted to. “This is…”

 

He didn’t finish the sentence.

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“Look at me, son,” she said, because he’d been staring at the floor. Slowly, he looked back up to her. She was giving the super-tired smile, and he saw how deeply pressed into her pillows she was, like she didn’t even have the strength to raise her head. He realized that they’d raised the bed because she wouldn’t have been able to look at him otherwise.

 

She took a deep breath to speak, which set her off into a terrible, heavy-sounding coughing fit. It took a few long moments before she could finally talk again.

 

“I spoke to the doctor this morning,” she said, her voice weak. “The new treatment isn’t working, Conor.”

 

“The one from the yew tree?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Conor frowned. “How can it not be working?”

 

His mum swallowed. “Things have moved just too fast. It was a faint hope. And now there’s this infection–”

 

“But how can it not be working?” Conor said again, almost like he was asking someone else.

 

“I know,” his mum said, her sad smile still there. “Looking at that yew tree every day, it felt like I had a friend out there who’d help me if things got to their worst.”

 

Conor still had his arms crossed. “But it didn’t help.”

 

His mum shook her head slightly. She had a worried look on her face, and Conor understood that she was worried about him.

 

“So what happens now?” Conor asked. “What’s the next treatment?”

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She didn’t answer. Which was an answer in itself.

 

Conor said it out loud anyway. “There aren’t any more treatments.”

 

“I’m sorry, son,” his mum said, tears sneaking out of her eyes now, even though she kept up her smile. “I’ve never been more sorry about anything in my life.”

 

Conor looked at the floor again. He felt like he couldn’t breathe, like the nightmare was squeezing the breath right out of him. “You said it would work,” he said, his voice catching.

 

“I know.”

 

“You said. You believed it would work.”

 

“I know.”

 

“You lied,” Conor said, looking back up at her. “You’ve been lying this whole time.”

 

“I did believe it would work,” she said. “It’s probably what’s kept me here so long, Conor. Believing it so you would.”

 

His mother reached for his hand, but he moved it away.

 

“You lied,” he said again.

 

“I think, deep in your heart, you’ve always known,” his mother said. “Haven’t you?”

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Conor didn’t answer her.

 

“It’s okay that you’re angry, sweetheart,” she said. “It really, really is.” She gave a little laugh. “I’m pretty angry, too, to tell you the truth. But I want you to know this, Conor, it’s important that you listen to me. Are you listening?”

She reached out for him again. After a second, he let her take his hand, but her grip was so weak, so weak.

 

“You be as angry as you need to be,” she said. “Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Not your grandma, not your dad, no one. And if you need to break things, then by God, you break them good and hard.”

 

He couldn’t look at her. He just couldn’t.

 

“And if, one day,” she said, really crying now, “you look back and you feel bad for being so angry, if you feel bad for being so angry at me that you couldn’t even speak to me, then you have to know, Conor, you have to know that it was okay. It was okay. That I knew. I know, okay? I know everything you need to tell me without you having to say it out loud. All right?”

 

He still couldn’t look at her. He couldn’t raise his head, it felt so heavy. He was bent in two, like he was being torn right through his middle.

 

But he nodded.

 

– • –

 

He heard her sigh a long, wheezy breath, and he could hear the relief in it, as well as the exhaustion. “I’m sorry, son,” she said. “I’m going to need more painkillers.”

 

He let go of her hand. She reached over and pressed the button on the machine the hospital had given her, which administered painkillers so strong she was never able to stay awake after she took them. When she finished, she took his hand again.

 

“I wish I had a hundred years,” she said, very quietly. “A hundred years I could give to you.”

 

He didn’t answer her. A few seconds later, the medicine had sent her to sleep, but it didn’t matter.

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They’d had the talk.

 

There was nothing more to say.