Up Read online

  Up!

  Al Stewart and Claire Davis

  Beaten Track

  www.beatentrackpublishing.com

  Up!

  SMASHWORDS EDITION

  Published 2018 by Beaten Track Publishing

  Copyright © 2018 Al Stewart and Claire Davis at Smashwords

  https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/alstewartauthor

  https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/CDavis96

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  ISBN: 978 1 78645 302 0

  Cover Artist: Noah Homes

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Beaten Track Publishing,

  Burscough. Lancashire.

  www.beatentrackpublishing.com

  After a failed attempt at college, Luke lives a quiet existence with his dad. He recovers from bitter disappointment and gradually life returns to a regular rhythm. Safe and predictable. Every day he gains confidence, but with health comes boredom. From the window ledge, he watches people outside and wishes he could be like them.

  There’s another side to Luke. Underneath his bed are five hidden pairs of jeans with matching Dr Martens: yellow, purple, striped, green and tartan. Some days he feels the itch to get them out. Nope. Those days are gone.

  One day, an amazing thing happens. Dynamic blog artist Formaldehyde Bob comes to town with an exhibition of light and dark! Luke has crushed on him since being fifteen, idolising the man and his unusual creations. Something about the art calls to Luke like nothing else, makes him believe there might after all be someone out there who thinks in the same way. A soul mate. A bird with a similar song.

  No. Luke isn’t going to go and see Formaldehyde Bob. He isn’t. Because he’s happy with his monotonous lot and doesn’t want to see hope sliding down a mountain of sand.

  Will Luke take a chance and visit Formaldehyde Bob?

  Can the jeans ever be worn again?

  Does grumpy Barbara ever smile?

  And the most important question: is there any magic left in the world?

  Find out in this snowy tale of young love in the most unexpected places.

  Content warning: references to self-harm, mental illness.

  Contents

  Prologue – Glass Man

  Chapter One – Luke

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Epilogue – Glass Man

  About the Authors

  Young Adult Titles by the Authors

  Beaten Track Publishing

  The man in the glass bottle

  One day I crawled inside

  on weary hands and knees,

  sick from human cruelty,

  harsh laughter as they tease.

  I shut my ears from noise,

  can’t follow anyway,

  words with multi-meanings

  impossible as clay.

  But I can see the light

  of colours in my enclosure,

  and the morning sun,

  dancing its exposure.

  Say not this is a prison,

  for I can almost feel

  your hand pressed upon the glass

  seeking mine to steal.

  The barrier is thick between us,

  both jailor and best friend.

  It will keep me safe from love

  and hurt that cannot mend.

  Remove your dearest hand

  and think no more of me,

  until the glass shall shatter

  for all eternity.

  Prologue – Glass Man

  For a long time, I didn’t know what I was building; only that I was a mere vehicle of a powerful driving force. Oh, it was me who did all the work. I collected sands from far, far, and wide, with seagulls screaming above and wind playing rogue with my hair. Somehow that wind got right inside my chest and heart, blowing, blowing, pushing aside the organs, and now the voices will never be still. Or quiet.

  “More sand.”

  “You’re doing great.”

  “More sand.”

  It took years to gather enough. So much! The journey brought worry and obsession. I tried to get it right. Days dragged into weeks, and still I kept piling up endless particles until mounds turned into golden mountains.

  Some people say deserts are beautiful curves of the Earth’s body, fluid as movement, deadly as any human can be. Maybe that’s true. As I loaded up the furnace, I only saw tears glistening in the heat and heard voices crying out. There were too many, too many. I couldn’t catch the words, and so I covered my ears. Who wants to hear suffering?

  I wanted to stop. I don’t know why I didn’t, except that a greater force made me continue; shovelling sandy tears onto the fire like a crazed fanatic.

  “Don’t stop.”

  “Keep going.”

  I gave the force a name. Seemed rude not to acknowledge it somehow, so I called it Shadow. Insubstantial and impossible to leave. Nebulous wanderer of dark and light. Lifelong companion.

  Glass is fairly simple to produce. Textbook instructions are clear on the method. I should know; I read them a million times. Sand, soda ash, limestone and heat, that’s all it takes, even if the end result is neither solid nor liquid but a defying mixture of the two. Complex. I like that. Being not one thing or another, but both. Or neither. Divergent.

  The books are wrong, though. To make glass is to laugh in the face of rules and protocols and to have determination as gritty as any desert. It’s not simple. Moving sand from one place to another is difficult enough. You can look at a desert before sleep and map out a drawing of its shape, then awake to find the buttocks have moved and the shoulders have slipped into a flat stomach. Crafty.

  And then there’s all the rest. I didn’t know if building the glass was the right thing to do, if it was OK. I still don’t. Hello, anxiety, my old friend. Being unsure, it doesn’t do anything for me. Anxiety eats me up, chewing like a cow with four stomachs. Round and round with nowhere to go except more worry.

  So, no. It wasn’t easy. As the glass began to form, I was sweating and moaning—didn’t matter nobody heard. I resented having to toil when I could have been out partying. Theoretically, I could! I shouted horrible, bitter words and considered walking away.

  “Fucker! This is madness. It won’t make any difference,” I told Shadow. The only answer I got was a tightening of the wind and flutter-galloping hands. I went downhill then, slipping on all that sand, looking for a firm foothold.

  Down-down, further than the deepest pit.

  I just want to make it clear, the glass wasn’t made without cost. It wasn’t the easy option.

  Yet I persevered. As I started up the furnace, I didn’t fully understand. The only things I had left were the drive to finish, tumultuous wind inside my organs, and words that seemed to come from nowhere.

  “Idiot.”

  “You’re rubbish.”

  It took a week to make the whole thing, though obviously the gathering took nineteen years, give or take the first couple. I can’t claim I started look
ing for sand as a baby. No.

  When the glass structure bubbled into a shape, at first, it looked like a storm. Maybe that’s because of forces fighting and bending, or perhaps it was all those tears turning into a great big sob. I tried to guess what it was going to be. I remember hoping for a gigantic whirly slide that led into water, or a glass ocean to conduct the Northern Lights.

  Shadow, you’re a sly old dog. You kept the final idea, the finished piece, hidden until the very end. From the ground, I watched the shape form and the walls closing. It was easy to see the narrow end of the bottle, where a cork should fit, and know that the bottom was far wider than the top. My deserts and beaches turned into a tall glass bottle that shimmered in the sun. Made from sweat, tears, and more tears.

  My tears.

  My bottle.

  Shadow, and I.

  From outside, I could see into the interior and also out past the room beyond. Looking through a glass bottle is disconcerting. It alters the vision and maybe perception. I suddenly had a strong urge to run around the bottle to the other side and find any footprints of where I had stood. To find proof. Where was the me? The I? I stayed like that for weeks, and weeks. They came. Doctors, nurses, people with charts, and asked questions, questions. I couldn’t catch the words. My ears rang with a void, like silence after tears.

  “Go inside,” Shadow ordered one day. Or was it a question?

  By that time, it was impossible I couldn’t have guessed the purpose of the bottle. But I was blinded by tears, and worry that already my footprints had disappeared.

  I stepped in.

  It was only as I touched the sides that the narrow doorway closed and I was trapped, looking out. Since then, I’ve wondered whether the doorway closed because the glass yearned to meet the other side? Everything wants to meet up with another. We’re all magnets, pushing and pulling to get away-be together-get away-be together.

  Or if there’s another explanation.

  Maybe the doorway closed because I wanted it to.

  So here I am. The man in the bottle. It’s not too bad. It’s OK. I can see out into the world from every angle. I don’t know if I can see everything. Does anyone?

  Sometimes, people still come to look and they seem to be saying words. Or maybe it’s only the rustle of shadows on sand.

  Chapter One – Luke

  I leave the house quite a lot these days. Dad and I go to the shops and the library. I keep my eyes fixed on the ground, but I’m OK as long as it’s not too busy. I won’t go near groups. I’m safer inside, where nothing’s expected of me. Dad understands.

  I like it down by the river, where a heron sits and ducks play. I can watch for hours, gathering up the greens, browns and yellow-oranges, zizzing, appreciating.

  I go out alone, now. I can—often—sometimes—visit cafés without panicking. Last week, I went to town and bought a new pair of yellow jeans. I went into Orange Apples, my favourite shop, and looked at clothes and jewellery. I saw the jeans almost straight away, hanging in the middle of a row. Bright yellow! They were made for me. I zizzed the colours and stripes, the music playing and my excitement at being back. There was a time I went to Orange Apples every Saturday.

  I might’ve rocked a bit, from sheer energy, and interest in a false-crocodile-teeth necklace hanging above the rack.

  I rushed over and examined the jeans. The fabric was summer, laughing and The Clash. I smelt better days, and happier times.

  “I haven’t seen you for ages,” Jim the shop assistant said. “Where’ve you been?”

  I zizzed and zizzed. “Nowhere good.”

  “You need to try those on. Man, they were made for you. There’s red, too. I kept a pair back, just in case you came in. Twenty-eight-inch waist, right?”

  “Yeah.” I’d forgotten he knew me so well. I blinked away stupid tears, shocked someone had missed me.

  When I came out from the changing rooms, he was waiting. “Wow. Man. You are one hot Tamale!”

  Wow is almost the right word. Wow-wow is better. In the reflection, the yellow was blinding, bright enough to wipe out last year. Almost. Wow-wow-wow. I laughed, and the sound propelled me towards the paying point and home.

  “Don’t stay away so long next time,” Jim said. “I miss you. How’s Harry?”

  Now, the jeans are hidden under the bed. I can taste them today, itching at my skin. Daffodils and egg yolk. They want to get out and be seen. I don’t know why I didn’t show Dad. He loves my jeans collection. I do know why I don’t tell him. I don’t want to give him false hope. I don’t want to talk about it.

  Everything is tedious this week. Flat. I could do with some steep hills. Today, I’ve missed The Sculpture Park. Dad left a postcard on my bed. I keep thinking about the Henry Moore’s and the underground galleries, and, and, my tree that’s been there hundreds of years. I miss it so much! Does it miss me? I wish I could go there! I want to wrap my arms around its base, the same way I have since being tiny, and think of all the changes it has witnessed.

  Not even people-watching can cheer me up. I wait every morning for the two men who live at number 56. I have an excellent view from the big window ledge in my bedroom, where I can hug my knees. Two guys. They live together. The taller man leans down, and the other one is always touching his arm. Once, three months ago, they were holding hands. After I saw that, I got back into bed and then I got out again. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Dad asked, ‘Are you OK, Luke?’ I didn’t tell him about number 56. It would be like a spider trying to explain how he wants to fly to the planet Mars.

  Over tea, I make a lot of dramatic sighs.

  “What’s up?” Dad asks.

  “Nothing.”

  “What are you worrying about? You’re bored, aren’t you?”

  “No, I’m not.” Sometimes I resent that he knows me so well.

  “Is it that postcard I left on your bed? Got you antsy?”

  “No.”

  “We could go to The Sculpture Park for a visit. It’s been eighteen months. There’s nothing to fret about there. We could walk over to the Longside Gallery. Remember that mini Eiffel Tower?” He laughs and pats my arm. Of course, he knows that now I won’t be able to stop thinking about the walk across the river, up the steps with iron branches embedded into the ground. “You have to go out one day, Luke. You’re wasting your life.”

  “I don’t have to.” I’m zizzing now, gathering up the worry of going out, or doing something new, but also the possibility of a visit.

  Dad watches me. “Well, just think about it.”

  “Hah! That’s like pushing a ball and then ordering it to roll.”

  Dad laughs. I laugh. He understands.

  The Sculpture Park is so amazing, The Sculpture Park is so amazing, The Sculpture Park is so amazing! I could say it every minute, and still I wouldn’t have said it. It’s not only the art, though obviously that’s huge and breathless. It’s the place itself, the up and down, the sky against sculptures, nature in harmony with human creation. Where else do you see that?

  There’s magic in that place I can’t easily explain. Maybe I don’t mean magic, more the satisfying way elements clash and merge. I could stand and catch the lines of anti-sense with my arms and still I couldn’t bring it all in. I, I love it.

  Dad won’t give up. “Let’s go tomorrow afternoon. It’ll be empty, what with the cold. We can have a look at that artist in the postcard. Robert Frazer, is it?” His voice goes all casual. I’m not fooled.

  “Don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do. You’ve got his student pictures plastered on your wall. He’s that fella from the blog.”

  Robert Frazer, known as Formaldehyde Bob. If you say formaldehyde slowly, it takes a while to get going. It’s trucks on a road, a boat struggling to sail. Formaldehyde is all the stuff that comes before the man, his history and art. He’s, he’s brilliant. He likes contrasts and using the environment to create openings and questions. For years, he was anonymous. He did a whole range of for
maldehyde art, and that is where he got the nickname, but the sand stuff is much better. His art was famous long before he was.

  I was at college when Formaldehyde Bob appeared on the news. I remember the date. I can’t blame Formaldehyde Bob for what happened to me. But it was part of it. I saw the news, and then I didn’t want to see anything. Not ever again.

  I’m zizzing, zizzing.

  I haven’t heard about him since. Seems like he’s old news now. Not for me. I’d do anything to know how he is. I’ve crushed on him since I was fifteen years old, roaming the internet for soul mates. His art really gripped, bit me like nothing else. His stuff was vivid and stark, with speech marks and voices that seemed to call to me.

  Luke! See me? Not art like they give you in school, is it? No. You can do this too.

  I’d always been into art. It was only after fixating on Formaldehyde Bob that I considered someone like me could go to college.

  He’s about the same age as me. I know that now. I didn’t then. He fits into the love-hate category for most art critics. Hate is a harder word to say than love. H needs breath and strength but L comes from the noise the tongue makes on the roof of the mouth as it waves.

  Dad reads from a newspaper. “Sculpted and blogged at night, by day a mathematician at Oxford. He must be brilliant! What a fantastic mind to be talented at so many things. It says he started plastering selfies on the blog and YouTube, and he… Oh… Students started writing things on his door… Police… Severe mental health… Institutionalised.” Dad stops and frowns. Breakdown is a funny word. You break, and then you’re down. “Poor guy. I hope he has people who love him. So very sad.” He notices me, losing it. “Luke, love?”

  “I’m all right. I already knew. What else does it say?”

  He strokes my hair. “Maybe he’s better now. I hope he got the right help.” He waits a minute, just stroking. “Luke?”

  Yeah. I’ve gone red, blown up like a balloon, even though I already knew about Formaldehyde Bob and the mental breakdown. Breakdown, meltdown, shutdown. All the downs and no ups. Why aren’t there ever any ups for people like us? Once you break, melt and shut, what’s left? Formaldehyde Bob and I went bang, both at Oxford University and both outsiders. If only I’d known he was there too!