The Last of Us. Rob Ewing

       Behind the Back Bay

       Date – lost count

      I have become skilled.

      For starters let’s talk about dogs. When dogs die after being trapped inside you usually find them at the front or back door, or near the toilet if it hasn’t gone dry, or next to the water melted out of a freezer. I imagine them running between the two choices: water and escape, water and escape, until it’s too late.

      Cats are usually by these too, or by the window if there isn’t a cat flap. But you can’t predict as well with cats, maybe because they had too much of their own mind back when they were still alive.

      Being an explorer you get skilled at knowing.

      I know what a cup of tea left for months looks like: dried muck. Bowls of fruit turn to furry glue. Cupboards jump with mice when you open them. Plants all die, apart from that one cactus we found, because trapped indoors was a good enough desert for it.

      And dogs are more often found at doors, cats at windows. That’s the rule. Plus dogs smell worse than cats, though neither of them are very nice.

      I say I’ve become skilled – but the truth is everything has got more difficult. So I can’t wait here for ever for my friends to come back. Can’t keep imagining new friends out of thin air. Can’t keep hiding in the same old sleeping bag without noticing the bad stink of it.

      Even with skill you can’t truly smell yourself. If you came home Mum, magicking yourself out of the wind in the bay, this is what I think you would smell:

      Still, there’s the worry about smells you can’t know, and there’s no way to come wise on that. So this morning I went outside. I went holding onto doors, chairs, cardboard boxes. Rubbish piles. And I collected the yellow bits of gorse from the field at the end of the street, and brought them in and put them in saucers all around.

      Now they shine like fires far away, like when the crofters set fire to the heather and you saw it at dusk.

      My eyes go slow around the room. It’s half-bright from the skylight, even though we taped cereal boxes over the glass to keep out the sun. Here in the high north, now that it’s summer, our sun hardly goes away. Underneath the skylight is Elizabeth’s bed: still made, with the edges neat the way she liked. Her rules on the wall, her survival books in a tower. Alex’s drawings and toys scattered like he always kept them, like he got grabbed in the middle of one last fight. Which I suppose he did.

      I can see the stain on the carpet. Red food dye. That mark tells where it started to go bad for us.

      Then the clothes that Elizabeth got out but didn’t have enough room to take. Her toys, which made me uneasy, because she was meant to be the one in charge. So uneasy that I wrapped them away from seeing.

      If anyone is listening: God, or Mum, or the devil: I should say that the only obstacle from taking the bad tablet is me. That’s not a pretty thought, right? Except I was too busy with other plans for escape to notice when the thought came. When it sneaked inside me.

      You see, I did one bad thing. But that bad thing led to lots of others, which grew like a crowd of dogs when you’re holding warm food.

      Now it hurts too much to think about. So I’ll think about this, instead: how Alex used to ask, ‘How many more sleeps?’ How some mornings he’d wake up convinced he didn’t sleep at all. How he was sure he just went to bed and woke up and it was light. Nothing in-between.

      How you used to give imaginary directions to someone driving a car over the sea to our island.

      Turn southeast at Greenland. Down a bit from Iceland, up from Ireland, up and across a bit from England or Wales. Our island is one of the Western Isles – not the Outer Hebrides, which is the wrong-sounding word that mainlanders use. (Nobody knows what Hebrides means – not even our teacher, Mrs Leonard, who’s dead now, though you can still see her if you want to.)

      Know what that means, Mum?

      ’Course you do – you are up there with God, and can see it all. Only I dare you – dare you to come down into the village, then go past the lifeguards’ station, and on to the houses that look like someone coloured them in with white chalks.

      Go ask her yourself. Go on.

      Mum, if it’s you that’s listening – even though you never give me any sign these days – then I have to tell you one more thing. Don’t take it the wrong way, but – your last look was a look that meant nothing.

      I don’t mean that there was nothing there at all. Being skilled these days I know what a real true empty face shows – there’s usually too much teeth, plus no eyes you can figure on. And I don’t mean it didn’t mean anything to me – because it did, else I wouldn’t be forever harking back and going from one detail – creased mouth – to the next – half-wide eyes – to the next – eye-wrinkles not happy or sad – and thinking: but what does it add up to?

      No, the problem about your last look was – I’m still not big enough to read it. That’s the law of faces: you can read kids younger, but older kids get hard. Adults, even harder still. If you get words as well, that can help – except when the look is sarcasm, which doesn’t go true and has no law.

      But you didn’t give me any words – just a look, which might be somewhere between surprise, or all-time giving in, or not caring, or caring too much.

      So I’m trying to work it out. Hopefully I get there before the time I’ve got runs out.

      And now that I’ve told you that one thing – now that we’re back on talking terms – I need to ask a favour.

      If you are in heaven, and seeing everything – like the crumbs at the bottom of my sleeping bag, like the gorse spread around the room or the sea’s sparkle in the window – then you need to blur your eyes for once. Stop paying attention to stuff that doesn’t matter.

      Instead: help my friends.