Somewhere else I am saying.
Title: Somewhere else I am saying.
Author: pr_scatterbrain/Professional Scatterbrain.
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything, not even the title which is taken from Other Lives and Dimensions and Finally a Love Poem by Bob Hicok.
Pairing: Andrew/Jesse, (Keira Knightley/Andrew)
Rating: pg-13
Summary: Andrew first meets Jesse when they are twelve. Standing at the front of the breakfast hall he is new and awkward. Nothing and no one in the school is new, not like Jesse is and Andrew stares at him until Carey laughs and tells him to stop. A Never Let Me Go fusion based on this prompt.
playground - the whole world is our
are you still bowling around after dark?
blowing your hope and slope in the wind
I lit a little fire from your chimney spark
I knew I’d never see you naked again
and the whole world is our playground.
Pete Doherty.
***
(Afterwards all his words and reassurances feel like they were a betrayal. But that is after).
***
Andrew first meets Jesse when they are twelve. Standing at the front of the breakfast hall he is new and awkward. Picking at something on his wrist, he twitches uncomfortably when the headmistress places her hand on his shoulder and stares at the floor when she introduces him. Nothing and no one in the school is new, not like Jesse is and Andrew stares at him until Carey laughs and tells him to stop.
Andrew listens to her. He and Keira always do.
After a week, so does Jesse when Carey finds him in the bathroom, tie crocked and shirt tails untucked when he should have showered and be back in the dormitories. Tutting, she tells him he's got to look after himself. Slipping his tie over his head and unbuttons she shoos him off to take a shower and brush his teeth. Over the years they all get used to doing the same.
"He'd be a mess without us," Carey says affectionately.
He's a mess either way, Andrew thinks. But without the three of them keeping an eye on him, Andrew is certain Jesse would be far worse.
At twelve Jesse is the new student. Years pass and although the scar on his wrist fades, he stays the new student in everyone’s minds. Somehow, he just never quite manages to work out how to fit in. Although Andrew ties Jesse’s tie perfectly every morning and Carey reminds him to eat a healthy breakfast and even Keira informs him when he gets answers wrong in their homework assignments, there is only so much they can do and it is never enough to obscure the innate otherness about him. He does his best; might sit in the back row of each classroom and run in the middle of the pack in gym class, but no matter what Jesse does, he always sticks out. When he speaks, the sharpness in his voice (his accent, they are taught) can be across the other side of Hailsham.
But that is only when he speaks. Often he doesn’t.
Over time they get into a habit of speaking for him. They ask for seconds at dinner for him (he is always too thin), they notify their teachers when he is ahead in his reading and they alert the uniform mistress when Jesse needs pants that are longer or replacement buttons for his shirts. They make excuses too, when what they say to mask Jesse’s behaviour is not enough. They aren’t very good at those. Not even Carey understands why he won’t look people in the eye and sometimes has difficulty breathing when they close the curtains and lock the doors at night.
“It’s okay,” she tells him. “We’re safe.”
Andrew nods, as does Keira, because they are.
It’s true. It is. But it doesn’t stop Jesse’s nightmares. Almost every night he wakes from them gasping and clinging to his bed sheets, knuckles white and bloodless. Sometimes, when Andrew wakes him in the middle, Jesse stutters out bits and pieces of them in stops and starts - about fires and all these people grabbing a hold of Ashley and Josh and how they almost got Jesse but the gardener grabbed a hold of him and didn’t let go - Andrew doesn’t understand what Jesse says. But he knows these nightmares frighten Jesse and often he won’t sleep properly for days afterwards.
Thankfully, when they tell the nurse, she steps in.
“Extra vitamins,” she tells Jesse when she hands him it and a glass of water before lights out. “It’ll do you good.”
It does.
***
When they become teenagers, they are placed in separate dorm rooms. The change upsets Jesse far more than it should. Without Carey and Keira, Jesse does not sleep for - Andrew doesn’t know. Even with the nurse giving Jesse extra vitamin supplements for nights his breathing is quick and shallow and Andrew worries. In the end he gets into Jesse’s bed and lies next to him.
“Copy me,” he whispers, placing Jesse’s hand on his chest.
It takes a while, but Jesse tries.
***
At around fifteen, sixteen Keira and Jesse unexpectedly begin to draw away from Carey. Andrew too, but mostly Carey. Andrew doesn’t understand why. It hurts Carey. He sees it every time Keira passes them in the halls without glancing at them and in the afternoons after classes have ended when she and Jesse will disappear out in the grounds. Their pale legs striding though the grass, and their voices slowly fading away with each step they take away from Andrew and Carey.
The teachers notice too, but when they find Carey in tears under the staircase they tell her it will pass. Andrew thinks so too. Except there is something new in Keira, something that prickles and is sharp and Andrew finds himself completely unfamiliar with it despite knowing Keira as long as he can remember.
Still, like nothing had changed Andrew climbs into Jesse’s bed at night and lies next to him. Maybe he shouldn’t. But he does.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
Against him, quiet and small, Jesse shrugs. “Nothing.”
The dismissal stings.
Andrew returns to his bed. He hears Jesse whisper his name, soft and questioning, but Andrew does not respond. In all the time he has known Jesse, Jesse has never done that to him. Not once.
Between classes the next day, he is in the upstairs boys’ bathroom and he smells cigarette smoke.
When he pushes open the small bathroom window, he sees Keira sitting on the edge of the roof. Dark and angular, she startles at the noise of the window being pushed open. But when she sees it’s him, not one of the teachers, her expression of shame is replaced with a smirk. He doesn’t like it. It doesn’t suite her. But he squeezes himself through the tiny window and joins her nonetheless because they are friends and that is what friends do.
“What are you doing?” he asks. “We all got into so much trouble last time.”
She inhales deeply, the red tip of the cigarette glowing. “So?”
He is - he doesn’t understand why she is doing this, or even where she got a hold of a packet of cigarettes.
“Jesse,” she tells him without being prompted.
Andrew doesn’t like that. He opens his mouth and starts to tell her that, but she rolls her eyes.
“I don’t see what the big deal is,” she retorts. “Jesse can do what he wants.”
It was Jesse who found the first packet. Or stole it. Stole it right out of the nurse’s bag. He wouldn’t take the pills that gave him but he would take what didn’t belong to him without a second thought. Andrew still doesn’t know how he feels about that. At the time he had tried to make Jesse put them back, but in a rare show of obstinateness, Jesse had refused. The four of them ended smoking a few of them after hours in the garden. Hiding behind a grove a trees, as far out into the grounds as they dared go, they had lit them with matches that, when struck looked like fireworks in the darkness. Even now, Andrew still remembers that, that and how Carey and Keira had giggled and how the smoke had made Jesse cough until his eyes were bright and face turned red. It was the coughing that alerted the teachers.
“Have you forgotten how much trouble we all got into last time?” he asks.
Her face darkens and she shakes her head.
“You should stop,” Andrew tells her.
She does not answer him. Instead she tells him that he needs to talk to Jesse.
“I tried,” Andrew says, because he has.
Keira snorts. “No you haven’t.”
***
The thing about Jesse is that he does not often speak. But when he does, sometimes he lies.
That’s the only explanation they have for some the things Jesse says.
***
They leave school at eighteen and move into cottages. The world is strange and new. The four of them somehow end up falling together again. The last few years of stilted conversations and taunt relations washed away like dirt in the rain. On the bus, he sits with Keira and puts his arm over her shoulder. As he does, she leans into him.
He does not really know what to make of it until she kisses him a week later in the garden.
“Oh,” he mutters; lips numb and heart racing.
She smiles, wiry and lovely.
“Yes,” she tells him, “Oh.”
In the evening after everyone else has retired they go to his new bedroom, (‘their new bedroom,’ a voice corrects), and she laces his fingers through hers. He does not know what he is doing. Neither does Keira. In the darkness, they undress. Her long dark hair falls halfway down her back and when he presses her down onto the bed, his hands get tangled in it. She laughs though, rather than being annoyed at him. When they kiss her laughter reverberates into his mouth and he can’t help but smile.
***
The world outside Hailsham is very different to all that Andrew knows. Strangely enough, where Jesse hid behind them at school, now it is he who speaks up with strange, halting confidence. He talks to the lady at the café down the road; orders them breakfast and lunch when they fumble over all the choices the menu offers, and befriends the gentleman at the local library. It confuses the villagers too.
‘You’re a bit off the beaten track, son,’ one or two say in confusion, or, ‘How long will you be visiting your friends?’ a few eventually end up asking him.
Jesse shakes his head. “I’m not a tourist.”
It puzzles Andrew.
“At my old school it was different,” Jesse says when asked.
Andrew pauses. Later he asks Keira what Jesse meant.
She stares at him, confused. “Don’t you remember? He transferred to our school when we were kids.”
Andrew - he knows that. It isn’t that he forgot; he still remembers being twelve and Jesse being the most interesting person he’d ever met (Jesse is still the most interesting person Andrew’s ever met), but… He doesn’t know. He knows that Jesse hasn’t always been here with them. Maybe not the memories are that clear, but he recalls snatches of being eleven and ten and nine and eight and it was just him, Keira, and Carey. It is strange, but he never thought too much of where Jesse was before.
When he asks Jesse, Jesse is quiet. “Elsewhere.”
It isn’t an answer. Not at all. Elsewhere isn’t a place or a school or anything. It feels like a lie and Andrew hates when Jesse lies. They are the worst things, Jesse’s lies. Dark and horrid and they cling to Andrew like tar and take ages and ages to go away. More than anything else, they make Andrew upset and he wishes Jesse had outgrown them like he outgrew his fear of the dark and those confusing nightmares he used to have.
“I don’t lie,” he overhears Jesse tell Arthur.
But he does.
Once, when Andrew was thirteen he overheard the teachers talking about it.
(“He’ll get over this behaviour,” the headmistress had told the nurse.
The nurse pursed her lips. “It’s been over a year now. I’m worried.”
“The conditions of our American sister institution were disgraceful. More like farms than anything else. Jesse just needs time to adapt. He’ll stop fussing soon enough.”)
Andrew still isn’t entirely sure what they meant, but he knows they were right about Jesse needing to adapt. It’s embarrassing sometimes the way he talks to Matt and Karen, or hides when they have visitors. When Andrew witnesses it, it makes him snappy and he hates being that way because when he’s like that his words make Jesse’s shoulders curl inwards and his hands shake and - if Jesse would just stop lying it would all stop. It’s the only thing about Jesse that Andrew can’t stand. The only thing Andrew won’t stand for, not when the lies he tells are so blatant and so clearly fabricated.
It is Jesse’s only fault though, and most of the time Andrew does not see it.
***
Without classes to take up their time, or homework to finish, they suddenly have time; time to play and time to wake up late and stay up until the early hours. It is pleasant. Andrew gets used to waking up with Keira pressed up against his side and the smell of Carey cooking downstairs in the kitchen. Effortlessly, he falls into the routine and so do they.
From somewhere Jesse finds a stray cat. Bedraggled and ugly, he brings it home to them. Wrapped up in his favourite red and yellow jumper it is a hissing, unpleasant creature. Andrew doesn’t care for it at all. Dubiously, he watches Jesse bath it and dress its sores. It snarls at him and strikes out at him with its sharp claws, but Jesse is not daunted. He mends the creature and then opens a can of tuna for it.
“You’re spoiling it,” Andrew tells him, because Jesse is.
Jesse smiles though. Andrew blinks.
He is not able to recall when Jesse last smiled. He tries to work it out in his head while he dabs iodine on the scratches the stray gave Jesse. No answer comes to him.
The cat - Jesse names it Copernicus but everyone else calls it Copper - becomes a part of their lives. It never quite becomes a house cat though. As much as they try, Copper prefers sleeping outside or, best of all under the cottage. As such, Andrew becomes accustomed to looking out his window into the garden and seeing Jesse out on the front lawn dangling shoe laces for Copper to swat at. They all do. At night they even start having to call Jesse in, as he losses track of time.
In spring, Copper gives birth to a little of kittens.
Black and white and grey, they are small and fluffy and Jesse falls in love with all of them. Unlike their mother, they do take to being kept inside, but more often than not, they end up outside. In the sunlight they tuck their tiny bodies up against Jesse and sleep the afternoons away. Sometimes they all go out and join him. Keira steals a kitten from Jesse’s stomach and Carey makes long daisy chains for all of them.
***
As nice as those initial days are, slowly without the teachers and the nurse to watch over Jesse, Jesse begins to fray.
The balance tips after Matt makes his second donation.
He returns to them smiling a crocked smile, with a waxy complexion and skin puckered around the long incision in his torso. Over dinner in the cottage he shares with Arthur and Karen, he shows it to them. Andrew doesn’t notice anything amiss until he wakes up in the middle of the night to the sound of Jesse crying out. Disorientated and almost blind in the darkness, Andrew stumbles out of bed towards Jesse’s. Inside his room, Jesse is red faced and wheezing, completely unable to catch his breath. Andrew goes to Jesse, but no matter what Andrew does or says he cannot settle Jesse. Tears stain his cheeks and Andrew tries, but Jesse is so frighten, so frightened.
“I think we need to call the nurse,” Andrew tells Carey and Keira the next morning.
He doesn’t mean for Jesse to hear, but he does.
Face white and hands shaking, he orders them not to. When that doesn’t work begs and pleads with them. Andrew tries to tell Jesse that he hasn’t had a nightmare like that since he was a child, tries to remind Jesse that the nurse fixed it last time and if they fetch her she can do it again. Jesse will not listen (in fact, it feels like he can’t). Instead he forces them promise they will do no such thing. He makes them swear it. None of them want to, but Jesse’s voice was rising and the shake in his hands were getting more pronounced and though Jesse hasn’t had a spell in years, they recognise the signs of one. Carey reaches out and touches him and Andrew makes tea and they three of them take him outside and eventually Jesse calms. Eventually.
Though he doesn’t sleep a good nights’ sleep for days, Jesse makes a huge effort. Almost every conversation they have, he joins in with. He cooks and cleans and gardens and whenever they stay inside and listen to records, he joins them even though they all know he would much rather be outside. As much as Andrew hates it when Jesse has his spells, this Jesse isn’t any better than the one that does not speak or look people in the eye. The act, which is what it is, lasts until the next nightmare.
In the kitchen Andrew makes Jesse tea which they drink outside sitting on the cottage steps. Behind them, Andrew imagines Copper’s hazel eyes staring through the stats at their unprotected ankles. It is early, not yet dawn. It feels too early to be awake and more than anything Andrew wishes Jesse was not as distressed as he is. Fiddling with his mug, he is all anxiety.
“It had that dream again,” he tells Andrew.
Andrew nods.
“It was different though. Instead of them being taken away me, it was me being taken away from them.”
“It’s alright,” Andrew tells Jesse, when Jesse begins to struggles to breathe.
It isn’t though.
At first it’s small things. Jesse skips the occasional meal. Once or twice he is a few minutes late for curfew. Slowly though, he doesn’t want to come inside at all. Andrew has to plead with him to check in. He doesn’t have to stay inside all night, he just has to come in for a few minutes. Just a few minutes.
“Please,” Andrew gets used to cajoling him. “Please Jess,”
Slowly, the nerves escalate into something else. Something Andrew cannot convince Jesse to see beyond, something that Carey cannot sooth away, something even Keira cannot understand. Though quiet, though never named, it builds and builds until Andrew goes to make his first donation. Tired and groggy he wakes find Jesse beside his bed with red rimmed eyes.
“We have to leave,” Jesse whispers.
Andrew -
Jesse takes Andrew’s hand in his and says it again.
***
“We have to leave,” Jesse tells Carey and Keira and the others.
But Jesse says a lot of things though.
No one really pays it any attention until they come home with the weeks shopping to find packed bags by the door and Jesse standing in the kitchen and the counter covered in blood. Andrew feels his heart stop and he drops the bags he is carrying.
“It’s okay,” Jesse tells them.
Holding out his hand, he shows them a small metal thing.
“I still remember how they deactivated my old one.”
***
Jesse wants to go immediately.
But now it’s Andrew’s hand that are shaking as he wraps Jesse hand up in a (hopefully) clean tea towel while Carey rushes to get their first aid kit out of the bathroom cupboard. The wound isn’t deep, but it bleeds as if it were. Andrew squeezes his hand around Jesse’s thin wrist and doesn’t let go even when Carey tells him to.
“I think the bleedings stopped,” she tells him.
But Andrew doesn’t listen. His fingers are tacky and Jesse - it’s Jesse. Andrew can’t let go.
“We have to leave,” Jesse quietly reminds him.
His voice is so soft and when Andrew looks at him, his eyes are gentle. It’s so messed up. If Andrew could laugh, he would. But he can’t. He’s holding Jesse’s wrist in his clenched hands, and their kitchen looks like sometime from one of Jesse’s nightmares. Jesse isn’t going anywhere. Andrew refuses to let him.
Like children they curl together at night. Keira leaves them be. Her eyes sad when she tells him, it’s Jesse. It’s always been Jesse. And it has been. With his heart burning in his chest, Andrew presses kisses along Jesse’s jaw and brow. He touches the white cotton bandage around Jesse’s wrist and in the darkness he tosses the covers aside and presses Jesse down into the wrinkled sheets.
Once or twice, Jesse opens his mouth to speak, but Andrew doesn’t let him.
In the morning, Andrew wakes early to Jesse tracing a line down the side of his ribs, touching the scar on his chest and pressing his lips against just above Andrew’s heart. His eyes are such an unreadable blue. They have known each other for over a decade. Almost a decade and a half. But again, Jesse is the new student. (Again, Andrew stares at him).
“Take me for a drive?” he asks, after a beat.
***
The weather is going to be horrid. Over an early breakfast Carey and Keira tell them not to go out, that there is meant to be heavy rain and thunder. It’s alright when they step out of the cottage, but the skies are dark steel grey and everything is still. Jesse crouches down to peek under the porch. Copper looks back out at him, eyes wide and unblinking.
“I wish they’d come inside,” Andrew says.
Jesse is quiet. “You can’t change something’s nature.”
By the car, Andrew watches as Jesse straightens and smooths a hand over his jeans. The car keys press into the softness of Andrew’s palm, embedding an exact mirror of themselves in his skin. By the door, Carey has looped her long navy and yellow scarf around her neck and Keira has put a jumper over her pyjamas. They look cosy and warm.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” Jesse asks.
They shake their heads.
Andrew drives.
Through the hills and country lanes. Jesse doesn’t give directions. Not even once. Not even when they reach a t-intersection. He just sits in the passenger seat. At lunchtime they stop and eat soggy sandwiches and warm soft drinks Jesse goes and buys from a petrol station beside the road. After Andrew finishes eating he still feels hungry and when Jesse offers half of his own sandwich, Andrew takes it.
“Do you remember the dreams I had growing up?” Jesse asks as they sit in the car together.
Andrew nods. Yes, he remembers Jesse’s nightmares of fire and people in vans coming in at night and grabbing his friends - only Jesse and a few others escaped. Swallowing the last bite of Jesse’s sandwich, Andrew waits.
“I think I was wrong.” Jesse pauses. “I think people came, but I wasn’t saved. I think I was one of the children taken.”
Andrew thinks of Jesse, twelve and new and so fascinating Andrew couldn’t tear his eyes off him. A decade and a half later, nothing has changed.
“Where to next?” he asks when there is nothing left to drink or eat. “Home?”
Jesse looks at his hands. “Can we keep driving for a little bit more?”
It’s just past one. It’s still early.
They get back into the car.
***
At three, Andrew turns the car around.
***
At a quarter to four, Jesse asks Andrew to pulls over and park.
He is startled when Jesse takes a knife, a battery pack, and that small piece of metal out of his backpack.
“Jess?”
Jesse shakes his head. “Not now, Andrew.”
Flicking open the blade, he places it in-between them. Andrew doesn’t know where Jesse got it. Or how. The shinny surface gleams next to the matte of the metal thing - the thing Jesse pulled out of himself.
“When they took me to Hailsham they had to replace my old one with this oneso no one would be able to find me. That’s why I always had that scar.”
Andrew takes his hands off the wheel. He remembers the scar. (Now it will be covered with a new one).
Jesse takes his hand and turns it over.
“There,” he points, just a thumbs width to the right of his pulse. “They put it there, maybe half a centimetre down.”
Andrew can’t breath.
With a squeeze, Jesse releases Andrew’s hand and picks up the metal.
“To deactivate it, you need to connect it to a battery. I’m pretty sure that will short it out,” he says. “I’m not sure how long it will take before someone notices.”
“I don’t-”
Jesse takes a deep breath and exhales it slowly. “I haven’t deactivated mine yet.”
He looks at Andrew and - at twelve Jesse used to hide in their dorm room. Breath short and pupils dilated and filled with this panic none of them could understand. Andrew used to lie next to him and make Jesse copy him. Make him slowly fill his lungs with air. In the small car, with his hair a little overgrown and lopsided, Jesse places the piece of metal on the dashboard.
Then, like a broken record he says it again.
‘We have to leave.’
Except he doesn’t say that. Not really. Or not at all.
This time it is a question. This time it is, ‘Will you come with me?’
***
Epilogue.
***
At the ticket office, the woman behind the counter grins when she hears Jesse speak and says something about Yanks that Jesse supposes it a joke. He laughs like it is one, like he understands it, and takes his change when she hands it over.
“You’re a bit off the beaten track, love,” she comments.
The corner of Jesse’s mouth twitches. “Just visiting some old friends.”
***
.
Author: pr_scatterbrain/Professional Scatterbrain.
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything, not even the title which is taken from Other Lives and Dimensions and Finally a Love Poem by Bob Hicok.
Pairing: Andrew/Jesse, (Keira Knightley/Andrew)
Rating: pg-13
Summary: Andrew first meets Jesse when they are twelve. Standing at the front of the breakfast hall he is new and awkward. Nothing and no one in the school is new, not like Jesse is and Andrew stares at him until Carey laughs and tells him to stop. A Never Let Me Go fusion based on this prompt.
playground - the whole world is our
are you still bowling around after dark?
blowing your hope and slope in the wind
I lit a little fire from your chimney spark
I knew I’d never see you naked again
and the whole world is our playground.
Pete Doherty.
***
(Afterwards all his words and reassurances feel like they were a betrayal. But that is after).
***
Andrew first meets Jesse when they are twelve. Standing at the front of the breakfast hall he is new and awkward. Picking at something on his wrist, he twitches uncomfortably when the headmistress places her hand on his shoulder and stares at the floor when she introduces him. Nothing and no one in the school is new, not like Jesse is and Andrew stares at him until Carey laughs and tells him to stop.
Andrew listens to her. He and Keira always do.
After a week, so does Jesse when Carey finds him in the bathroom, tie crocked and shirt tails untucked when he should have showered and be back in the dormitories. Tutting, she tells him he's got to look after himself. Slipping his tie over his head and unbuttons she shoos him off to take a shower and brush his teeth. Over the years they all get used to doing the same.
"He'd be a mess without us," Carey says affectionately.
He's a mess either way, Andrew thinks. But without the three of them keeping an eye on him, Andrew is certain Jesse would be far worse.
At twelve Jesse is the new student. Years pass and although the scar on his wrist fades, he stays the new student in everyone’s minds. Somehow, he just never quite manages to work out how to fit in. Although Andrew ties Jesse’s tie perfectly every morning and Carey reminds him to eat a healthy breakfast and even Keira informs him when he gets answers wrong in their homework assignments, there is only so much they can do and it is never enough to obscure the innate otherness about him. He does his best; might sit in the back row of each classroom and run in the middle of the pack in gym class, but no matter what Jesse does, he always sticks out. When he speaks, the sharpness in his voice (his accent, they are taught) can be across the other side of Hailsham.
But that is only when he speaks. Often he doesn’t.
Over time they get into a habit of speaking for him. They ask for seconds at dinner for him (he is always too thin), they notify their teachers when he is ahead in his reading and they alert the uniform mistress when Jesse needs pants that are longer or replacement buttons for his shirts. They make excuses too, when what they say to mask Jesse’s behaviour is not enough. They aren’t very good at those. Not even Carey understands why he won’t look people in the eye and sometimes has difficulty breathing when they close the curtains and lock the doors at night.
“It’s okay,” she tells him. “We’re safe.”
Andrew nods, as does Keira, because they are.
It’s true. It is. But it doesn’t stop Jesse’s nightmares. Almost every night he wakes from them gasping and clinging to his bed sheets, knuckles white and bloodless. Sometimes, when Andrew wakes him in the middle, Jesse stutters out bits and pieces of them in stops and starts - about fires and all these people grabbing a hold of Ashley and Josh and how they almost got Jesse but the gardener grabbed a hold of him and didn’t let go - Andrew doesn’t understand what Jesse says. But he knows these nightmares frighten Jesse and often he won’t sleep properly for days afterwards.
Thankfully, when they tell the nurse, she steps in.
“Extra vitamins,” she tells Jesse when she hands him it and a glass of water before lights out. “It’ll do you good.”
It does.
***
When they become teenagers, they are placed in separate dorm rooms. The change upsets Jesse far more than it should. Without Carey and Keira, Jesse does not sleep for - Andrew doesn’t know. Even with the nurse giving Jesse extra vitamin supplements for nights his breathing is quick and shallow and Andrew worries. In the end he gets into Jesse’s bed and lies next to him.
“Copy me,” he whispers, placing Jesse’s hand on his chest.
It takes a while, but Jesse tries.
***
At around fifteen, sixteen Keira and Jesse unexpectedly begin to draw away from Carey. Andrew too, but mostly Carey. Andrew doesn’t understand why. It hurts Carey. He sees it every time Keira passes them in the halls without glancing at them and in the afternoons after classes have ended when she and Jesse will disappear out in the grounds. Their pale legs striding though the grass, and their voices slowly fading away with each step they take away from Andrew and Carey.
The teachers notice too, but when they find Carey in tears under the staircase they tell her it will pass. Andrew thinks so too. Except there is something new in Keira, something that prickles and is sharp and Andrew finds himself completely unfamiliar with it despite knowing Keira as long as he can remember.
Still, like nothing had changed Andrew climbs into Jesse’s bed at night and lies next to him. Maybe he shouldn’t. But he does.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
Against him, quiet and small, Jesse shrugs. “Nothing.”
The dismissal stings.
Andrew returns to his bed. He hears Jesse whisper his name, soft and questioning, but Andrew does not respond. In all the time he has known Jesse, Jesse has never done that to him. Not once.
Between classes the next day, he is in the upstairs boys’ bathroom and he smells cigarette smoke.
When he pushes open the small bathroom window, he sees Keira sitting on the edge of the roof. Dark and angular, she startles at the noise of the window being pushed open. But when she sees it’s him, not one of the teachers, her expression of shame is replaced with a smirk. He doesn’t like it. It doesn’t suite her. But he squeezes himself through the tiny window and joins her nonetheless because they are friends and that is what friends do.
“What are you doing?” he asks. “We all got into so much trouble last time.”
She inhales deeply, the red tip of the cigarette glowing. “So?”
He is - he doesn’t understand why she is doing this, or even where she got a hold of a packet of cigarettes.
“Jesse,” she tells him without being prompted.
Andrew doesn’t like that. He opens his mouth and starts to tell her that, but she rolls her eyes.
“I don’t see what the big deal is,” she retorts. “Jesse can do what he wants.”
It was Jesse who found the first packet. Or stole it. Stole it right out of the nurse’s bag. He wouldn’t take the pills that gave him but he would take what didn’t belong to him without a second thought. Andrew still doesn’t know how he feels about that. At the time he had tried to make Jesse put them back, but in a rare show of obstinateness, Jesse had refused. The four of them ended smoking a few of them after hours in the garden. Hiding behind a grove a trees, as far out into the grounds as they dared go, they had lit them with matches that, when struck looked like fireworks in the darkness. Even now, Andrew still remembers that, that and how Carey and Keira had giggled and how the smoke had made Jesse cough until his eyes were bright and face turned red. It was the coughing that alerted the teachers.
“Have you forgotten how much trouble we all got into last time?” he asks.
Her face darkens and she shakes her head.
“You should stop,” Andrew tells her.
She does not answer him. Instead she tells him that he needs to talk to Jesse.
“I tried,” Andrew says, because he has.
Keira snorts. “No you haven’t.”
***
The thing about Jesse is that he does not often speak. But when he does, sometimes he lies.
That’s the only explanation they have for some the things Jesse says.
***
They leave school at eighteen and move into cottages. The world is strange and new. The four of them somehow end up falling together again. The last few years of stilted conversations and taunt relations washed away like dirt in the rain. On the bus, he sits with Keira and puts his arm over her shoulder. As he does, she leans into him.
He does not really know what to make of it until she kisses him a week later in the garden.
“Oh,” he mutters; lips numb and heart racing.
She smiles, wiry and lovely.
“Yes,” she tells him, “Oh.”
In the evening after everyone else has retired they go to his new bedroom, (‘their new bedroom,’ a voice corrects), and she laces his fingers through hers. He does not know what he is doing. Neither does Keira. In the darkness, they undress. Her long dark hair falls halfway down her back and when he presses her down onto the bed, his hands get tangled in it. She laughs though, rather than being annoyed at him. When they kiss her laughter reverberates into his mouth and he can’t help but smile.
***
The world outside Hailsham is very different to all that Andrew knows. Strangely enough, where Jesse hid behind them at school, now it is he who speaks up with strange, halting confidence. He talks to the lady at the café down the road; orders them breakfast and lunch when they fumble over all the choices the menu offers, and befriends the gentleman at the local library. It confuses the villagers too.
‘You’re a bit off the beaten track, son,’ one or two say in confusion, or, ‘How long will you be visiting your friends?’ a few eventually end up asking him.
Jesse shakes his head. “I’m not a tourist.”
It puzzles Andrew.
“At my old school it was different,” Jesse says when asked.
Andrew pauses. Later he asks Keira what Jesse meant.
She stares at him, confused. “Don’t you remember? He transferred to our school when we were kids.”
Andrew - he knows that. It isn’t that he forgot; he still remembers being twelve and Jesse being the most interesting person he’d ever met (Jesse is still the most interesting person Andrew’s ever met), but… He doesn’t know. He knows that Jesse hasn’t always been here with them. Maybe not the memories are that clear, but he recalls snatches of being eleven and ten and nine and eight and it was just him, Keira, and Carey. It is strange, but he never thought too much of where Jesse was before.
When he asks Jesse, Jesse is quiet. “Elsewhere.”
It isn’t an answer. Not at all. Elsewhere isn’t a place or a school or anything. It feels like a lie and Andrew hates when Jesse lies. They are the worst things, Jesse’s lies. Dark and horrid and they cling to Andrew like tar and take ages and ages to go away. More than anything else, they make Andrew upset and he wishes Jesse had outgrown them like he outgrew his fear of the dark and those confusing nightmares he used to have.
“I don’t lie,” he overhears Jesse tell Arthur.
But he does.
Once, when Andrew was thirteen he overheard the teachers talking about it.
(“He’ll get over this behaviour,” the headmistress had told the nurse.
The nurse pursed her lips. “It’s been over a year now. I’m worried.”
“The conditions of our American sister institution were disgraceful. More like farms than anything else. Jesse just needs time to adapt. He’ll stop fussing soon enough.”)
Andrew still isn’t entirely sure what they meant, but he knows they were right about Jesse needing to adapt. It’s embarrassing sometimes the way he talks to Matt and Karen, or hides when they have visitors. When Andrew witnesses it, it makes him snappy and he hates being that way because when he’s like that his words make Jesse’s shoulders curl inwards and his hands shake and - if Jesse would just stop lying it would all stop. It’s the only thing about Jesse that Andrew can’t stand. The only thing Andrew won’t stand for, not when the lies he tells are so blatant and so clearly fabricated.
It is Jesse’s only fault though, and most of the time Andrew does not see it.
***
Without classes to take up their time, or homework to finish, they suddenly have time; time to play and time to wake up late and stay up until the early hours. It is pleasant. Andrew gets used to waking up with Keira pressed up against his side and the smell of Carey cooking downstairs in the kitchen. Effortlessly, he falls into the routine and so do they.
From somewhere Jesse finds a stray cat. Bedraggled and ugly, he brings it home to them. Wrapped up in his favourite red and yellow jumper it is a hissing, unpleasant creature. Andrew doesn’t care for it at all. Dubiously, he watches Jesse bath it and dress its sores. It snarls at him and strikes out at him with its sharp claws, but Jesse is not daunted. He mends the creature and then opens a can of tuna for it.
“You’re spoiling it,” Andrew tells him, because Jesse is.
Jesse smiles though. Andrew blinks.
He is not able to recall when Jesse last smiled. He tries to work it out in his head while he dabs iodine on the scratches the stray gave Jesse. No answer comes to him.
The cat - Jesse names it Copernicus but everyone else calls it Copper - becomes a part of their lives. It never quite becomes a house cat though. As much as they try, Copper prefers sleeping outside or, best of all under the cottage. As such, Andrew becomes accustomed to looking out his window into the garden and seeing Jesse out on the front lawn dangling shoe laces for Copper to swat at. They all do. At night they even start having to call Jesse in, as he losses track of time.
In spring, Copper gives birth to a little of kittens.
Black and white and grey, they are small and fluffy and Jesse falls in love with all of them. Unlike their mother, they do take to being kept inside, but more often than not, they end up outside. In the sunlight they tuck their tiny bodies up against Jesse and sleep the afternoons away. Sometimes they all go out and join him. Keira steals a kitten from Jesse’s stomach and Carey makes long daisy chains for all of them.
***
As nice as those initial days are, slowly without the teachers and the nurse to watch over Jesse, Jesse begins to fray.
The balance tips after Matt makes his second donation.
He returns to them smiling a crocked smile, with a waxy complexion and skin puckered around the long incision in his torso. Over dinner in the cottage he shares with Arthur and Karen, he shows it to them. Andrew doesn’t notice anything amiss until he wakes up in the middle of the night to the sound of Jesse crying out. Disorientated and almost blind in the darkness, Andrew stumbles out of bed towards Jesse’s. Inside his room, Jesse is red faced and wheezing, completely unable to catch his breath. Andrew goes to Jesse, but no matter what Andrew does or says he cannot settle Jesse. Tears stain his cheeks and Andrew tries, but Jesse is so frighten, so frightened.
“I think we need to call the nurse,” Andrew tells Carey and Keira the next morning.
He doesn’t mean for Jesse to hear, but he does.
Face white and hands shaking, he orders them not to. When that doesn’t work begs and pleads with them. Andrew tries to tell Jesse that he hasn’t had a nightmare like that since he was a child, tries to remind Jesse that the nurse fixed it last time and if they fetch her she can do it again. Jesse will not listen (in fact, it feels like he can’t). Instead he forces them promise they will do no such thing. He makes them swear it. None of them want to, but Jesse’s voice was rising and the shake in his hands were getting more pronounced and though Jesse hasn’t had a spell in years, they recognise the signs of one. Carey reaches out and touches him and Andrew makes tea and they three of them take him outside and eventually Jesse calms. Eventually.
Though he doesn’t sleep a good nights’ sleep for days, Jesse makes a huge effort. Almost every conversation they have, he joins in with. He cooks and cleans and gardens and whenever they stay inside and listen to records, he joins them even though they all know he would much rather be outside. As much as Andrew hates it when Jesse has his spells, this Jesse isn’t any better than the one that does not speak or look people in the eye. The act, which is what it is, lasts until the next nightmare.
In the kitchen Andrew makes Jesse tea which they drink outside sitting on the cottage steps. Behind them, Andrew imagines Copper’s hazel eyes staring through the stats at their unprotected ankles. It is early, not yet dawn. It feels too early to be awake and more than anything Andrew wishes Jesse was not as distressed as he is. Fiddling with his mug, he is all anxiety.
“It had that dream again,” he tells Andrew.
Andrew nods.
“It was different though. Instead of them being taken away me, it was me being taken away from them.”
“It’s alright,” Andrew tells Jesse, when Jesse begins to struggles to breathe.
It isn’t though.
At first it’s small things. Jesse skips the occasional meal. Once or twice he is a few minutes late for curfew. Slowly though, he doesn’t want to come inside at all. Andrew has to plead with him to check in. He doesn’t have to stay inside all night, he just has to come in for a few minutes. Just a few minutes.
“Please,” Andrew gets used to cajoling him. “Please Jess,”
Slowly, the nerves escalate into something else. Something Andrew cannot convince Jesse to see beyond, something that Carey cannot sooth away, something even Keira cannot understand. Though quiet, though never named, it builds and builds until Andrew goes to make his first donation. Tired and groggy he wakes find Jesse beside his bed with red rimmed eyes.
“We have to leave,” Jesse whispers.
Andrew -
Jesse takes Andrew’s hand in his and says it again.
***
“We have to leave,” Jesse tells Carey and Keira and the others.
But Jesse says a lot of things though.
No one really pays it any attention until they come home with the weeks shopping to find packed bags by the door and Jesse standing in the kitchen and the counter covered in blood. Andrew feels his heart stop and he drops the bags he is carrying.
“It’s okay,” Jesse tells them.
Holding out his hand, he shows them a small metal thing.
“I still remember how they deactivated my old one.”
***
Jesse wants to go immediately.
But now it’s Andrew’s hand that are shaking as he wraps Jesse hand up in a (hopefully) clean tea towel while Carey rushes to get their first aid kit out of the bathroom cupboard. The wound isn’t deep, but it bleeds as if it were. Andrew squeezes his hand around Jesse’s thin wrist and doesn’t let go even when Carey tells him to.
“I think the bleedings stopped,” she tells him.
But Andrew doesn’t listen. His fingers are tacky and Jesse - it’s Jesse. Andrew can’t let go.
“We have to leave,” Jesse quietly reminds him.
His voice is so soft and when Andrew looks at him, his eyes are gentle. It’s so messed up. If Andrew could laugh, he would. But he can’t. He’s holding Jesse’s wrist in his clenched hands, and their kitchen looks like sometime from one of Jesse’s nightmares. Jesse isn’t going anywhere. Andrew refuses to let him.
Like children they curl together at night. Keira leaves them be. Her eyes sad when she tells him, it’s Jesse. It’s always been Jesse. And it has been. With his heart burning in his chest, Andrew presses kisses along Jesse’s jaw and brow. He touches the white cotton bandage around Jesse’s wrist and in the darkness he tosses the covers aside and presses Jesse down into the wrinkled sheets.
Once or twice, Jesse opens his mouth to speak, but Andrew doesn’t let him.
In the morning, Andrew wakes early to Jesse tracing a line down the side of his ribs, touching the scar on his chest and pressing his lips against just above Andrew’s heart. His eyes are such an unreadable blue. They have known each other for over a decade. Almost a decade and a half. But again, Jesse is the new student. (Again, Andrew stares at him).
“Take me for a drive?” he asks, after a beat.
***
The weather is going to be horrid. Over an early breakfast Carey and Keira tell them not to go out, that there is meant to be heavy rain and thunder. It’s alright when they step out of the cottage, but the skies are dark steel grey and everything is still. Jesse crouches down to peek under the porch. Copper looks back out at him, eyes wide and unblinking.
“I wish they’d come inside,” Andrew says.
Jesse is quiet. “You can’t change something’s nature.”
By the car, Andrew watches as Jesse straightens and smooths a hand over his jeans. The car keys press into the softness of Andrew’s palm, embedding an exact mirror of themselves in his skin. By the door, Carey has looped her long navy and yellow scarf around her neck and Keira has put a jumper over her pyjamas. They look cosy and warm.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” Jesse asks.
They shake their heads.
Andrew drives.
Through the hills and country lanes. Jesse doesn’t give directions. Not even once. Not even when they reach a t-intersection. He just sits in the passenger seat. At lunchtime they stop and eat soggy sandwiches and warm soft drinks Jesse goes and buys from a petrol station beside the road. After Andrew finishes eating he still feels hungry and when Jesse offers half of his own sandwich, Andrew takes it.
“Do you remember the dreams I had growing up?” Jesse asks as they sit in the car together.
Andrew nods. Yes, he remembers Jesse’s nightmares of fire and people in vans coming in at night and grabbing his friends - only Jesse and a few others escaped. Swallowing the last bite of Jesse’s sandwich, Andrew waits.
“I think I was wrong.” Jesse pauses. “I think people came, but I wasn’t saved. I think I was one of the children taken.”
Andrew thinks of Jesse, twelve and new and so fascinating Andrew couldn’t tear his eyes off him. A decade and a half later, nothing has changed.
“Where to next?” he asks when there is nothing left to drink or eat. “Home?”
Jesse looks at his hands. “Can we keep driving for a little bit more?”
It’s just past one. It’s still early.
They get back into the car.
***
At three, Andrew turns the car around.
***
At a quarter to four, Jesse asks Andrew to pulls over and park.
He is startled when Jesse takes a knife, a battery pack, and that small piece of metal out of his backpack.
“Jess?”
Jesse shakes his head. “Not now, Andrew.”
Flicking open the blade, he places it in-between them. Andrew doesn’t know where Jesse got it. Or how. The shinny surface gleams next to the matte of the metal thing - the thing Jesse pulled out of himself.
“When they took me to Hailsham they had to replace my old one with this oneso no one would be able to find me. That’s why I always had that scar.”
Andrew takes his hands off the wheel. He remembers the scar. (Now it will be covered with a new one).
Jesse takes his hand and turns it over.
“There,” he points, just a thumbs width to the right of his pulse. “They put it there, maybe half a centimetre down.”
Andrew can’t breath.
With a squeeze, Jesse releases Andrew’s hand and picks up the metal.
“To deactivate it, you need to connect it to a battery. I’m pretty sure that will short it out,” he says. “I’m not sure how long it will take before someone notices.”
“I don’t-”
Jesse takes a deep breath and exhales it slowly. “I haven’t deactivated mine yet.”
He looks at Andrew and - at twelve Jesse used to hide in their dorm room. Breath short and pupils dilated and filled with this panic none of them could understand. Andrew used to lie next to him and make Jesse copy him. Make him slowly fill his lungs with air. In the small car, with his hair a little overgrown and lopsided, Jesse places the piece of metal on the dashboard.
Then, like a broken record he says it again.
‘We have to leave.’
Except he doesn’t say that. Not really. Or not at all.
This time it is a question. This time it is, ‘Will you come with me?’
***
Epilogue.
***
At the ticket office, the woman behind the counter grins when she hears Jesse speak and says something about Yanks that Jesse supposes it a joke. He laughs like it is one, like he understands it, and takes his change when she hands it over.
“You’re a bit off the beaten track, love,” she comments.
The corner of Jesse’s mouth twitches. “Just visiting some old friends.”
***
.