No, I'll remember it as the day my best friend Billy Ledger died.
I knew Billy had a hole in his heart. I imagined it as a playing card heart with a neat round piece missing. Something you could run a pen through. Or a bullet. They said that Billy's heart was the reason he couldn't run like the other kids, and why he was always huffing and puffing those funny splotchy cheeks of his. I didn't know why this should be and couldn't understand why everybody thought it was so serious. After all my Aunt Cilla had lived with a broken heart for years. And dad said that Mr Troy, the bank manager had no heart at all. And mum said Dr. Postelthwaite had a heart of gold.
Hearts were obviously funny things. Far too complicated for my seven-year-old brain to understand.
I didn't understand much. I wasn't good at schoolwork, especially arithmetic. I could read reasonably well and add up on my fingers but taking one number from another was well nigh impossible. I didn't know why we subtracted things when we could multiply. Now, multiplication was easy. I couldn't stop multiplying. Everytime I saw two numbers I multiplied them faster than my brother's computer. Any number. Be it thousands or millions. I just had the knack. Whenever I saw a phone number I multiplied the digits.
Maybe that was one reason why it happened. Maybe not.
Maybe it had something to do with the Sun falling to the Earth.
I remember there being a lot of excitement on that day. My dad packed a suitcase as if we were going on holiday and we went off to the butchers shop on the High Street. When we got there a group of adults were loading carcasses onto a big van, cleaning out the cold room. That's where we were going to have our holiday. In the freezer. They said the walls were thick enough to protect us.
"That stuff will be barbecued nicely after its all over," my dad said to one of the men.
"Let's hope we're around to enjoy it," he said in reply.
My dad laughed and pushed the family into the shop and out the back and into the cool room. Half the town sat in their jumpers and scarves and the other half lay in thick woollen blankets. All of them panting their conversations through small clouds. It was like watching kettles boil. I saw Billy over in the corner with his mum so I went straight over to him.
"Hi, Billy," I said, kneeling on the floor next to him.
He looked at me with sad eyes dribbling with tears. He coughed and wheezed and little snakes sprung up on his cheeks and nose.
"Wanna play something?" I said, puffing the words so I could watch my breath steam out in front of me.
His mother looked at me with a lovely smile and said that Billy was too sick to play today. Billy tried to smile but broke up into another coughing spasm. I'd seen him like this before and knew he needed his rest so I just sat next to him and held his hand. I really loved Billy and wished he had a normal heart like the other kids. It'll get better, I told myself. When he grows up the hole will disappear. I looked forward to that day. I was sure that when Billy was all right again I'd have a friend that didn't call me pea brain.
It was pretty boring watching the adult activity and I really didn't know what it was all about. I overheard Michael Hampton explaining something to Sally Clark's mother. Michael was home from university so what he said made everybody listen. He was the only kid I knew in town who had gone to university.
"There's been a lot of sunspot activity," he was saying. He went on to explain that somebody had calculated that there was going to be some kind of flare-up that could scorch the Earth.
"So it's going to get hot?" Sally's mum said.
"Bloody hot," my dad said.
"Hotter than Hades," somebody else said.
Whenever I drew the Sun in my pictures I made it into a big disc with straight lines coming from it. I imagined that one of those lines had fallen off and was about to fall onto our street. I didn't realise that it was more than our street that was affected.
"And they can predict that?" Sally's mum said with a shake of her head.
"Not usually," Michael told her, "But some Russian guy calculated it using mathematics."
I'll bet he multiplied rather than subtracted.
"Got it down to the exact second," Michael continued. "Incredible when you think about it. We went from not fully understanding the Sun's activity to predicting when a solar flare would hit the Earth."
"Its not really a flare, as such," Dr Postelthwaite interrupted as he came into the room. "It's more a belch of hot gas that's been drifting steadily towards us."
"Didn't they think it would strip away the atmosphere at one time?" Michael said and turned to Sally's mum. "That means we'd be wiped out. The whole planet would die.
"They did think that was possible at one time but computer models suggest otherwise," Doctor Postelthwaite said in his reassuring medical voice. He turned to Michael. "You can be certain evolution will continue its slow march forward. It'll get hot for an hour or so and pass by into space. We'll be safe enough here."
"Bloody hot," my dad said.
"Hotter than Hades," somebody else said.
So maybe that had something to do with why it happened. Maybe not. But one thing's for sure, I didn't evolve slowly. I took a giant leap forward.
Soon it was time to close the door. The local policeman supervised its sealing and Dr. Postelthwaite calmed everybody down and set up a clock on a wall so that we could all watch the time tick away.
It ticked away.
Slowly.
Like evolution was supposed to do.
Somebody organised some community singing and old Mr Cloth from the sheep farm told jokes that I had to block my ears for. It didn't take long for us kids to get bored and we started shuffling about and moaning and being cheeky to our parents.
After I'd got a cuff across the bottom for throwing pillows at the girls I settled down sulkily next to Billy and held his hand. Soon I was squeezing it tight because he'd started panting loudly and wheezing like a car engine. He seemed to be constantly gargling and I could feel the vibrations of his chest rattling through our clenched fingers. Dr Postelthwaite examined Billy and told me to go sit somewhere else. I moved about five paces away and watched my best friend being laid down and stuck with a needle. They covered him up and his eyes fluttered. The doctor spoke softly to his mother who was bawling like a baby. Billy's dad looked like his face was made of stone. My mum put an arm around me and gave me a cuddle and told me to be brave.
It took me a while to understand what was happening. Adults were always so calm about things. Here we were waiting for a piece of the Sun's rays to topple down on us and the adults played games and told jokes. And over there Billy was gargling his own saliva and all they could do was shake their heads and say prayers. It hit me harder than any slice of sunshine when I realised that Billy was dying.
I jumped up and shouted, "Billy! Billy!"20
My mum pulled at my clothes and my dad grabbed me around the middle. I was shouting and kicking wildly trying to get close to my friend. I thought all it needed was for me to hold his hand again.
Somewhere to my left people started saying "10 ... 9 ... 8 ..."
"Billy! Billy!" I screamed while multiplying the numbers in my head 10 ... 90 ... 720 ... "Get an ambulance! Quick! Somebody get an ambulance!"
My dad wrestled me to the ground and Dr Postelthwaite came at me with a big needle.
"...7 ...6 ...5 ..."
I felt my skin pricked and looked at Billy's eyes rolling around in their sockets. I could hear terrible rumblings in his throat. 5,040 ... 30,240 ... 151,200 ...
I felt a flush of blood in my head and saw images of me and Billy playing in the mud a few years ago. His round pink face dappled with strings of red was laughing that throaty laugh of his. A piece of black mud hung like snot from his nose. I flicked it away and we both fell over in hysterics.
"...4 ... 3 ... 2 ..."
604,800 ... 1,814,400 ... 3,628,800 ... The numbers swam through my brain. I could see them floating in a room above the cot Billy and I played in. It was the first time I'd remembered that far back. We were only babies then. He was lying at one end kicking his feet in the air. Puffing and panting even then. His little chubby hands were reaching out to touch those funny little digits that seemed to be attached to him in some way. He was gurgling and blowing bubbles.
"...1 ... zero!" A hushed expectancy clouded through the cool room.
3,628,800 ... zero. "Billy, Billy," I whimpered the only noise to break the silence apart from one final departing gurgle from my one and only friend. The only person my own age I ever loved.
At that moment my eyes closed and I went to sleep.
Not a comfortable sleep. Not a sleep anyone would describe as restful. It was more like a nightmare.
I got up and walked to the cool room door but found it had been melted shut. The cooling system had burnt out and there was no way air was going to get into the room. Dr Postelthwaite was tapping at his mobile phone and shaking it and saying it was dead.
Like ...
"Come on," a voice said to me, "let's go get some help."
I turned round.
... Billy.
"Billy!" I shouted and gave him a huge loving hug.
"Come on, we have to get help," he said and he ghosted through the thick walls of the cool room. A moment later his head popped back in. "Come on!" he shouted.
I followed him.
It was the fittest I had ever seen him. He ran faster than me for the first time in our lives. His face was soft and clear, his eyes bright and alert. "Come on!" he shouted back at me and ran like the wind down the High Street.
Or what was left of it.
A lot of the houses were smoking cinders. Piles of molten metal were parked neatly in lines at sixty degree angles. We had to jump pools of bubbling asphalt. There were fires all over the place and billowing smoke rose from the trees erasing any semblance of blue sky. It was hot. Bloody hot. Hotter than Hades.
I found it hard to breathe but Billy seemed to have no trouble. Once I stopped and doubled over clutching my side and wheezing through gritted teeth and terrible pain. Billy came back for me, put his arm around my shoulder and virtually carried me. He kept saying we had to get help or the folks in the cool room would die of asphyxiation. I looked at him blankly.
"They won't be able to breathe," he said with a grin. I half expected him to call me a pea brain but instead he told me that I was their only hope. "Nobody else has the intelligence to do this," he said, "but we have to hurry."
"I can't go on," I huffed, "you go."
Little Billy Ledger, with the hole in his heart, the boy that nobody wanted to play with because he was too weak, hoisted me onto his back. We charged down a dirt track like cavalry to the rescue. He whinnied like a horse, raised his hands as if they were front hooves and made his lips vibrate. I waved an imaginary sword and shouted, "Hi Ho Silver, and away," and made clicking noises to spur him on.
It was ten kilometres to the next village. It was where the fire station was. Billy carried me the whole way. When we got to the end of the street we looked at another burnt out street. The fire trucks were there, though. I knew they would be because they'd been hidden in a mine shaft just out of town. Billy let me down and said he'd go back and tell the folks the trucks would be coming. I hesitated about letting him go by himself.
"I'm OK now. Go on tell them," he said and ran a few paces before stopping and turning around and waving. He darted off down the track like an Olympic sprinter. It was wonderful to see him running as fast as multiplication instead of that slow adding pace he used to shuffle at. When he'd disappeared from sight I turned to the burnt out street scene.
"Help! Help!" I shouted at a man in a bright yellow suit.
He gave me a strange look and checked my arms and legs. He asked where I'd come from and I told him about the people trapped in the cool room over at our village. He spoke to another person who checked me out as well.
"Come on we gotta go. They'll die if we don't!" I screamed.
After a few more people had looked me over and shook their heads we jumped aboard the fire truck and sped away.
I sat in the front of the truck watching as the firemen cut the door of the cool room open and one by one all the people I knew filed out. I got down when I saw my parents. I ran over to them but stopped half way across the road when I saw Billy's mum come out holding my friend's limp body. When my mum saw me she screamed and ran over to hug me.
"How did you know to come for us?" Dr Postelthwaite asked the fireman when he came out.
"The kid told us," he said pointing at me being smothered by motherly love.
Dr Postelthwaite stared in my direction.
"What's wrong, Doctor? You look like you've seen a ghost," the fireman said.
Everybody was gaping at me now. Only my mother made any movement, embarrassing me with so many kisses. Dr Postelthwaite was babbling but I heard a few words that made me smile at Billy's body.
"...was hysterical ... gave him a shot ... then he ... disappeared."
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