Not waving but drowning
'Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning'
The day before Cook's mother leaves for good, she tells him to clean his room.
He doesn't do it.
And then it doesn't matter anymore because she's packing her suitcase with steady hands, her face straight and tear free.
The door shuts quietly behind her and he thinks there should be more noise, more drama in a life falling apart.
She told him goodbye like she was going to the shops. Like she'd be home in time for tea.
He never cleans his room. Nobody tells him again.
---
He learns that betrayal tastes a lot like fear. The adrenaline makes it bitter, difficult to wash away.
---
He keeps going to school.
He tries not going for a couple of days but it isn't the same without someone to catch him. Without someone to notice.
He struggles to fill his time and by the third day he's back sitting in English with Freddie and JJ like nothing ever happened.
They're reading African folktales and he doesn't have the book.
He feels like Chicken Licken. The sky is falling in.
--
If he drinks enough before he goes to sleep he can remember what it felt like to be five, tucked up in bed safe and loved in a world that didn't extend twelve feet beyond his front door.
Weed works too and Cook likes to roll joints. Likes the feeling of his hands moving practiced over white paper.
---
If asked he would say he had nothing left to lose.
Then Freddie tries to take Effy and suddenly it's goodbye to the three muskerteers.
He wears the loss like a scar.
---
To Cook nothing (with perhaps the one exception of sex) is better than the feeling of coming up.
Little white pills, swallowed dry, a few pinches of white power snorted quick and then it's all up, up, up and he feels like God. Feels fucking invincible.
There's nothing Cook won't try. Nothing he wouldn't do to keep that feeling.
Bloodied and hurting on a dirty club floor Cook opens his eyes and laughs. Let's the secrets spill out of him like sweets.
He's shit and he deserves nothing and he has nothing but right now, head buzzing with JJ's truth pills, he's untouchable.
---
Running is like breathing, easy as long as you don't think about it too much.
---
It turns out getting lost is pretty simple if there's no one who cares enough to look for you.
Sleeping next to Effy, legs tangled together on the back seat of someone else's car, Cook dreams in black and white.
Life like an old movie, love and happy families always guaranteed.
---
When Freddie turns up he has to remind himself not to be pleased. Has to remind himself Freddie didn't come for him.
His father's body lies between them like a line drawn in the sand. Cook has no white flag to wave.
He has nothing that hasn't already been taken.
Freddie sits waiting for an approval he will never give but Cook knows it doesn't matter.
She made her choice. Straight lines instead of triangles and none that lead to him.
---
He lets them take him home because he has nowhere else to go.
---
Back alone, in his dingy student flat, other people's voices seep through the thin partition walls.
Cook gets into bed, stares up at the off-white of the ceiling tiles and knows he's back to being Chicken Licken, the sky falling in above his head. Except there's no one there to tell.
When he falls asleep he dreams of his father. Of Effy and the three muskerteers.
He dreams of happy endings he can't believe.
'Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.'
Stevie Smith- Not waving but drowning