 
# 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

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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 looking 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 formaldehyde 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!

The word me is half of the word melt. Me-lt.

Dad pushes the newspaper article across the table. "There's an interview. Poor fellow. He's going to be at The Sculpture Park, Luke! The first ever performance blog artist. Think of that! He entered a competition, before being ill, and beat hundreds of others, even artists already known. Isn't that interesting?" Dad slurps his tea, and I think of the yellow jeans and wind in my hair. "To enter a competition and only find out you won a year later, after you've been ill. It was waiting for him."

The air zizzes through my shock.

That Formaldehyde Bob is coming to my ultimate-absolute fave place on the planet is beyond zizzing and yellow jeans. I, I am a mess and coffee and there's a tear. "Never heard of him." I wipe my face. I jump up from my seat and spill my drink. I pull at my hair. I can't keep in all the ferocious energy that's spilling out. "The Sculpture Park? Really?"

Dad kisses the top of my head and holds me close until I stop shaking. "It's OK. We can go and see him."

"Never heard of him."

"Mister Contrary. I'll leave you to read it. And I shall be visiting The Sculpture Park tomorrow after lunch. Be nice if you'd come with me. We can show support to Robert Frazer. I bet he really needs some."

"No."

The article is entitled 'The Fallen King'. It's written by his old tutor. The writing has a sneery tone I don't like and remember from college.

_Formaldehyde Bob was bound to come-a-tumble... Anyone with that level of arrogance deserved a waking-up... Bob stands out wherever he goes, because of his red hair and strangeness... The weirdest man I ever met._

I ziz so much, Dad's newspaper falls on the floor. I save the page with the photo, but I jump up and down on the part with the tutor. I don't understand that betrayal. Why wouldn't the tutor try to help? I do not like the words weird or quirky.

In the photo, Formaldehyde Bob looks sad. He looks like my memories of the last days of college, before Dad came to bring me home. Eyes like death and defeat. He looks like he knows exactly what people are saying about him. I'm sure he read what they wrote on his door. Bushy red beard and hair like a hedgerow. I don't suppose hair like that can be tamed! Does he hold hands?

Formaldehyde Bob is at The Sculpture Park right now, less than ten miles from here. He, he won't know about the secret cave or the old boathouse hidden in the reeds. He has this one last chance. Just thinking about it makes me rushy, ziz-rushy and sick. One last chance is climbing up a mountain of sand. I remember when college gave me one last chance to turn up to lectures. I locked myself into my bedroom with broken glass, and here I am. Scars to last a lifetime.

One last chance is a huge pile of shit. It's a cruel and easy way out. It's not a chance but a threat, false, throwaway and immoral. Maybe Formaldehyde Bob needs many chances, just like I did. This world has a deficit of chances.

It upsets me. I cry and rock for ages. I don't need to see hope and possibilities all sipping down the slope.

Fuck off world.

***

Looking down on the dark street, I make a decision. I'm not going to The Sculpture Park. I love it there, but it's tied up with happy memories and important moments. I remember deciding to go to college standing on the bridge over the lake.

"Dad," I'd said, "I'm ready. I'm going to go to Oxford." Saying those words, I had felt brave as an army of soldiers. "If I get the grades, I'm going. I'll never get the chance again."

Dad had looked like he was about to cry. We went home and had fish and chips and wine. We both cried.

Hah.

If I go back there with Dad tomorrow, it might remind him of what a failure I turned out to be.

It was me. I sent Formaldehyde Bob that competition entry, almost two years ago, emailed under the name Sexypants69@gmail.com. I remember reading about the competition online and thinking how awesome it would be for him to come to Yorkshire.

# Chapter Two

I am zizzing so good tonight! I'm rocking too, and talking helter-skelter. Dad laughs and laughs. It's like old times, before I went to college when we didn't know what was to come. When I still wore short sleeves.

I went! I went to The Sculpture Park! I love it there—I love it—so much—I love it. That place is in my bones and my childhood and my life. When I die, I want to be scattered over those hills with the sheep and the bluebells. I'd like to be scattered with my dad in that place where I discovered how to ziz the trees and merge with the patterns of the year.

We went in the side entrance and walked up over the mesh path. From quite a long way away, we could see where Formaldehyde Bob's structure is going to be built. There's a huge mountain of what looks like plastic bricks, a machine that could be a furnace, a cement mixer and all kinds of other materials. A perfect place. It's halfway between the gallery and the lake, where the light rebounds, and you can hold the, the symmetry in your hands.

We walked right over to look. There were two people. One was Formaldehyde Bob!

He is so much more than in that article. So much more than he was in the news report when police dragged him away screaming.

So, so much more! He looks way younger. His red beard and hair are short now, his beard only a light, red scattering. His hair is wavy. The red is a beacon, but in The Sculpture Park, everything has a place. It catches the eye in the same way a mountain does—up—up—up and meant to be there. He looked so right, like he belonged. I wish I could tell that fucker tutor about that. I wanted Formaldehyde Bob to go ahead and build the exhibition so badly I jumped up and down. I want him to see everything; to understand the blades of grass and the children who visit; to love the sheep and the rain. I want him to know about the pattern of life there, and the history of the woods and trees.

I want Formaldehyde Bob to do the opposite of breaking down. I want him to fix-up!

I moved closer, quite close. Dad was shocked, but he didn't say anything. I had shocked him twice that day—once when I appeared wearing the purple jeans and telling him to hurry, and then by going over to Formaldehyde Bob.

Approaching people is not normally my style.

I have four pairs of coloured jeans—purple, green, striped and tartan. For over a year, they've been folded up at the back of my wardrobe. They represent better days. I bought them before college.

Formaldehyde Bob. Watching him was silver ice and climbing up a mountain of sand. It made me feel the same way I did when I was fifteen. The world stopped and I saw only his brave, brave pictures of other worlds distorted by ordinary things like wind. He is a man who knows about the many elements comprising a single moment. He gets the complexity and the all-consuming nature of existence.

I've never met anyone who really gets it. Dad tries; he listens and nods and smiles. It's not the same.

It was all I could think about, along with the men at 56, sun on my neck, forty sheep, a powerful breeze, and if I was hungry, thirsty, or just happy. I zizzed, trying to sift through.

Formaldehyde Bob was telling a woman about sun on the lake. "You see, it's not only about glass, but also the reflection of the environment. Everything has a purpose, and I must remember that."

The woman wasn't interested. She wasn't even looking, and then she started reading a book. Rude! Formaldehyde Bob talked anyway. It made me hurt and ache in my shoes that all his lovely words got lost in the wind, and he had nobody but a person reading to talk to. He noticed me and Dad, and he said this thing that went right through the zizzing.

"When people stand up inside the glass, I want them to visualise a prison. I want them to have a choice about whether to leave or not."

Formaldehyde Bob looked at me from the side. "If they stay, they'll understand how it's possible to view the world—even beauty—without being part of it. And that—that's a prison."

I was so excited, I joined in. "A prison can be home. Yes. A prison can be the whole world except what's in your own head."

Formaldehyde Bob came right over. "Yes. Is it a punishment or reward to look out? To see but not take part?"

"It's, it's both. You can see damp and the raindrops, but you cannot talk on the tram. It's—it's no touching." I couldn't look at him. Even zizzing and rocking to bring in all the excitement, I still couldn't. I wanted it so badly, so, so badly. If I'd looked at him, it would have hurt. I might have seen him not getting it. I might have seen him thinking _You're so quirky!_ the way the students did at college. I do not like the words weird or quirky.

Dad, bless him. He rubbed my back, and it helped me to know there is one person out there, and he is for me, no matter what.

Formaldehyde Bob laughed, loud and low. He looked to the side and down. "Yes. Can you live without talking on the tram? I guess that's the point. You know?" He looked me up and down, at my zizzing and rocking, and I hope he also saw that I had moussed my hair and worn my purple jeans. Just in case. I might be a deadbeat and a failure, but I am not a bad-looking dude, with spiked hair and a leather jacket with a painting of _The Fall of Icarus_.

"I'm very pleased to meet you. How lovely to meet some locals." He spoke very quickly and, after a minute, held out a hand. "I do so want to encompass the locality into my vision. I love your jeans. Gosh."

Through college and defeat, I, I looked up into his face. Dad's hand on my back went still. Formaldehyde Bob beamed, beamed with his red beard and blazing eyes, nothing like defeat. I have never seen a beam quite like that! He waved his hands, and for an exciting minute, I thought he was asking to hold mine. I don't know if this kind of thing happens for other people, but for me, that moment was a brilliant, dazzling sunshine. I was drenched. I will remember it forever.

Dad nudged me so I held out my trembling hand. Formaldehyde Bob shook it. The, the shock stopped me zizzing. A million baths with bubbles and zesty oranges flowing and, and, I met him underwater. I met him!

"How fascinating! We've been coming here for years, but we've never met anyone building an exhibition before," Dad said. "We're massive fans of your work. We'd like to support you in any way we can."

"Gosh! I didn't think I had any fans." His gaze was still on me, and of course, that could have been good, very good, or the worst kinds of bad where people search for diagnosis-bollocks words and stuff of that kind. When they try and squash me into a medical term.

I listened for which kind of gaze it was. I couldn't tell. "You do," I said. "We're fans. I have a copy of _Mindless Aversion_ on my wall. I look at it every night, and think about all the reasons not to avoid important things. It's one of your early pastels." Dad suppressed a snigger, because I am a very big avoider and averse to just about everything. "We're fans and friends. We'd like to be friends."

"Oh," Formaldehyde Bob whispered. The circle of the word fell on my head and disintegrated into snow, snow, gently falling. I caught it with a ziz. "You don't know how good it is to hear that. Would—would you like to have a coffee with me. Both of you? Hah-hah. Or there's tea. I think there is water too. The café has all the drinks."

"That would be great," Dad said quickly in the gaps before they even occurred. "We'd love to. Welcome to Yorkshire!"

I love my Dad.

It was a very good thing I didn't know about the coffee, and the talking, or I would have been so worried I might never have gone to The Sculpture Park. That is one of the reasons why seeing into the future would be a terrible invention.

We walked up the slope past the never-ending steps and the singing tree through a haze of surreal. Inside the café, delicious smells of gingerbread wafted through the awkward.

"What are you planning next, after this?" Dad asked Formaldehyde Bob as we sat down. "How are you? I know you've been poorly."

"I'm good. Much better than I was. I only got to do this because I entered a competition a while ago. I'm not even sure I have it in me now! All this—" Formaldehyde Bob gestured with big, knobbly hands "—is very probably going to fail." His voice disappeared down underneath the leaves. "I'll probably pack up tomorrow and leave."

"You mustn't stop! You won't fail! You're the most talented artist ever! I've followed you since I was fifteen years old and—believe me—I'm right. You're going to go up!" That Formaldehyde Bob should stop making his art, and stop being himself, hurt me. It, it hurt. I could not gather up enough words, so instead, I zizzed and hoped my earnestness went into him.

"Gosh."

I realised that knowing I was a huge fan was not all good. He'd guess that I also knew about last year.

Dad must have known my brain was exploding because he stroked my back and made small talk. "It must be very hard to be an artist in this world of certainties."

"I—I have the drive to do it, and the craving. That's why I came. I don't suppose artists ever lose the desire to create. It's just that I've lost my angle. I can't think how to say what I want to."

Formaldehyde Bob couldn't stop looking at me, albeit from a sideways angle. It's not vanity making me think so, no. I'm very used to people looking. Staring is one of the—many—reasons I squashed the zizzing when I was young, and also rocking, and the volume of my voice. I tried so hard, in the end I didn't talk at all except when it was absolutely essential. Once I started college, it was surprising how rarely that was. I went the month of November without saying anything at all. Not one word. I suppressed my voice and ever so much more. I suppressed me.

I was wrong. How can the lines of the world be silenced? They can't. How could I not gather in the colours of morning and the sprinkles of rain on my face? It's no wonder it all piled into ugly defeat, and I blew up.

Bang.

The way he kept looking at me, it was a bit like the guys at number 56.

I hadn't known about him saying, _gosh_.

I kept looking at him, too. At his beard and beaming, and the muscles on his hands. At sliding down a mountain of sand, and that bastard tutor pushing him. This was not going to happen to Formaldehyde Bob, not again. Not ever again.

Never.

Dad chatted, asking questions and keeping the coffee from turning into a squirming heap of cringe. "Where are you from? Did you always want to be an artist? Where does your inspiration come from?"

Formaldehyde Bob thought. He moved his lips, wriggled his nose and eyebrows. His voice was quiet and melodic. "I don't know. I'm a fraud. It's not really art, I'm afraid. It's just that I'd be shit at normal jobs like making cars and serving coffee. I was very good with numbers." He stole my free biscuit and broke it in two. "The art comes from deep inside. Not always from a healthy place. I don't understand it fully, but it seems to speak in the only way I can. But...I've lost all my nerve. I was ill. I wish I was a proper artist with dreams and...visions that people can relate to. But I'm not. At least, not anymore." He looked down, his face sagging. "I'm not anything."

Dad offered Formaldehyde Bob his free biscuit. "I don't believe that. It looks like art to me."

"And me!" I said. I shouted. The people at the nearest table turned and looked. I zizzed and knocked over a glass. "Shit."

"Gosh!" Instead of coffee, he had a milkshake and drank it through a straw. He sucked very hard, so hard the liquid gurgled at the end. The people looked again. Formaldehyde Bob stopped sucking. He smiled gravely at the staring people. "Good morning," he said seriously. He sucked more, much more loudly. The people looked away, shiftily. I know that look. Formaldehyde Bob saw me giggling and winked. I might be wrong, but it seemed like he guessed how much I hate people who stare and judge.

"What's your name?" Formaldehyde Bob asked at last, stroking his chin. "Talking to you has really cheered me up. You don't know how tired I felt this morning, like I had a mountain to climb and no help."

"Luke."

"Would—I don't suppose...if you...would you help me?"

I struggled. Help him? Me? It had been a very long time since I had been in a position to help anyone, except by feeding the birds and leaving out food for the hedgehogs.

"How do you mean?" Dad asked.

"I—well, with the sculpture! I need someone to give me building advice."

"Oh? Don't you have workers to help?"

"No—yes." Formaldehyde Bob squinted. "Yes. I have people to lift and carry. I don't have people who know about dark and light. I don't have anyone to encourage me."

"Yes," I said. I shouted. The people at the next table worked hard not to stare.

"Luke, no. Don't you think that's a little too much? I mean, you know." Dad gave me a meaningful look. "With the cold and that. Snow is forecast."

I ignored him, saying and shouting along with the ziz. "Yes. I can help."

Dad bit his lip, but he didn't say anything else.

Formaldehyde Bob was so pleased he stood up and cheered. The people at the table nearby laughed and cheered too, and so Dad and I joined in. I zizzed the beard and beaming, the beautiful hills and the coffee.

Gosh.

Before we left, assassin-like, I stole some of the free biscuits and slipped them into Formaldehyde Bob's coat pocket when he went to the loo.

"You two go," Dad said. "I'll stay in the café and read." He can be sneaky.

On the way down the slope to the exhibition site, I almost made myself throw up trying to impress Formaldehyde Bob. I made a silent list of things to say: art, music, clothes, and art. I kept trying. All that came out was zizzes.

"Look, here's where it's going to be. I'd hoped it would be more central so the cars would see it when people drive in." He seemed nervous too, crossing his arms and uncrossing them.

"Oh, no. This is the absolute perfect place," I assured, on safe ground at last. "Because this is where the two pathways converge, and because it's in between the lake and the slope. The light here will be caught."

"Oh? Thank—thanks! I hadn't thought of that. To be honest, this morning I packed up my suitcase to go home." He shook his head. "I think I've lost faith in art."

I was so appalled, I zizzed myself into a frenzy. He watched, but he didn't seem uncomfortable with my frantic limbs. People normally try their best not to ogle, whereas Formaldehyde Bob looked me up and down, and in and out. It was pretty intense. I wished I was naked. Not a single word came out, so I tried another technique Dad taught me long ago.

"What is it with you and free biscuits?" I asked.

"What? Biscuits?"

"Yeah. I know you stole some. But I still have faith in you." I nodded towards his pocket. "Show me."

He looked so confused, I laughed. "In your pocket. I know for sure you nicked a few packs."

His hand brought out the stolen biscuits. "I—I didn't. How did they get there?"

"Now you'll have to finish the exhibition. Otherwise I'll call the police." Oh, shit. My joke had gone horribly wrong. He looked miserable and lost, not head over heels with interest. "I'm only messing. I put them there."

"Why?"

To leave something I had touched in his pocket? To initiate a shared moment? To hear him say _gosh_? Even I didn't know. I could not think of any way of getting out of such an awful situation. "Because I'm an idiot. You kept eating them in the café. I guessed maybe you were hungry."

He laughed and touched my arm. "Oh! Well, thank you. I think." A dimple appeared under his light beard. "I have a real sweet tooth. I forgot to have breakfast this morning. I'm—overwhelmed by coming here. I thought it would do me good, but—well." He opened a pack and ate a biscuit.

"Maybe you haven't given it long enough. Why don't we start with a walk around? I mean, you can't possibly encompass the environment without knowing it."

"That is a really good idea! Would—would you walk with me?"

Only into the fiery pits of Mordor. I'd even go to Cleethorpes. "Yes. Follow me. Why have you lost faith in art? That's like saying you no longer believe in oxygen." I led him to the right, to the other bridge that leads up to the Longside Gallery, pointing out the natural symmetry and order of the landscape. He listened to everything I said intently.

"Maybe I mean, I've lost faith in _my_ art."

"That's OK. Do it for me and Dad. You don't need faith. Not really. All you need is to release it." I was talking crap. "I know that whatever you do will be fucking awesome." We sat on the bench outside the gallery.

Redness swept across his face and neck. He made a sort of breathy laugh sound, and went even redder. "What—what is that?" He meant my zizzing arms. "Is it gathering everything up? Bringing it in? Experiencing the world?"

Nobody had ever asked me that before, not actually asked. I recalled the theories and all the articles I'd read. None of them came close to Rob's explanation while sitting with him on the bench outside the Longside Gallery. "Yeah, kind of. Bringing it in, and keeping it back. Not so different from breathing."

He gazed at me so intensely I got a boner. "Is that why you have such tremendous capacity for observation? I never would have noticed half of the stuff you pointed out. You even saw dew on the grass!"

"No, that's because of my superpowers."

He half-laughed and stopped himself. "Yeah? What's your secret strength?"

"I'm very literal-minded. Didn't you know? We all are."

"Are—are you joking?"

"And no empathy, either." I suppressed a bitter laugh. I waited for five seconds. "Are you warm enough?"

In the end he laughed, and I thanked god-whoever, because I won't be dating a man with no appreciation for deadpan or irony.

He listened to every word about the view between the galleries and the sweep of the countryside. He even wrote stuff down on a little notepad he said he nicked from the gallery shop. "You need to be my manager," he said, in his singsong voice. "You're amazing."

"And you need to stop stealing!" I wished he would steal me. "Will you say _gosh_?"

"Gosh."

We stuttered and blushed, throwing comments and suggestions. I don't remember the walk back at all, so it could well be we floated on the air of my zizzes.

***

The street is full of leaves and bins crashing about in the wind like naughty animals. They roll onto one another and have a big party. From my window ledge, it looks like noisy fun. The kids are out of school, running down the road the same way I did once, about a million years ago when I was a kid.

I'm not going to go to The Sculpture Park ever again, not ever. I didn't like the look of Formaldehyde Bob, and his beard is stupid. He's never going to like me, not in a million years.

Everything about art is a waste of time and energy.

I am flat as a pancake because I got rolled by The Sculpture Park, the possibilities, and the way Formaldehyde Bob says _gosh_ , like the ocean rolling over pebbles.

# Chapter Three

Dad has something he wants to say. It's in the pauses between words, and the way he pushes around his food into tidy piles. "Go on," I tell him, "say it. And stop scraping your knife."

"No. It's just. Luke." He says my name as a question, but it's not. "Don't you think it might be a little too much to cope with?"

"No."

"But, Luke." He doesn't want to come out and say all the things I cannot do.

"Dad." We do this thing with names sometimes, mostly when we argue. He says mine and I say his, like a game of pass and catch. "I went to college. I'm an adult. I can probably manage to carry a few bricks. I'm a capable person." I say the end part far too loudly, as if trying to convince myself.

"I know. I know," he says sadly, and now I feel bad. "I want you to go! I just worry. I know you're capable, and talented, and kind. You're funny and clever and thoughtful! I know all that, my love."

I ziz his sadness and my failure, and it makes me sick. All the things he did to get me to college! He had such high hopes for me.

"Don't forget my sense of humour."

"I don't want you to be disappointed." He squeezes my hand. "I can see how excited you are, and that's a good thing. It is. It's just, don't get your hopes up too high. You were like a firework when we came back last time."

"Nothing bad could ever happen at The Sculpture Park." I'm sure of this. That place is mine.

He smiles. "I know what you mean. I love it there, too."

"It's only helping with bricks. Dad."

"Luke. No, it isn't."

"Is."

"Luke. I saw the way you were looking at each other. I know flirting when I see it. He couldn't keep his eyes off you. I came back from the café and you two were arm-wrestling! Or something like that. His face was all red from laughing." He leans forward. "He was hitting on you. And you on him."

"OMG, do you think so?" I jump up from my seat. Lame I should be talking guys with my dad, but Formaldehyde Bob is making my head burst with possibilities that have to come out somewhere. "Really? Don't you think he's hot? Do you think he liked me?"

"Oh god, Luke. Please think about this. There is nothing wrong with...flirting and that. But he's not an ordinary person. He's not like us."

"Neither am I."

"He lives a different life, love, that's what I mean. He's an artist. He lives hundreds of miles away. Probably has champagne for breakfast."

"I wasn't planning on marrying him, Dad. Not before Christmas, anyway. I mean, where would we get a ring? I'm not getting married in a Christmas jumper! And, actually, he didn't have any breakfast at all, and that's why he stole our biscuits."

We laugh. "Luke. I'm sorry." Dad kisses my hand. "Just be careful. And yes, take it from me, he likes you."

He means, don't wear my heart on my sleeve like I did at college.

Formaldehyde Bob and college push up suddenly, through unexpected hope and anticipation of seeing him again.

"It gave me hope. Formaldehyde Bob gave me hope! He can't fail. He was my inspiration!" I ziz how important this is. I cry a little bit. "I'd hate him to fall. He's not going to fall!" Formaldehyde Bob was my first crush, and now he is imprinted on my being forever. Since being fifteen, I have had many crushes, but it was Bob who first gave me the idea of college and success. Formaldehyde Bob's blog. Every Friday night, there'd be a new post. It was how I got through my A' Levels.

"He's not going to have any more breakdowns or shutdowns or any of that down shit. He's going to go up! Somebody has to go up, one day. He's not going to fail like I did."

Dad holds me in his woollen jumper and patience. "You never failed," he says into my hair. "I'm going to say that every day until you believe me. Failure is a useless word. You did not fail! The world failed. College failed. They failed _you._ I failed you."

I sniff. "I was talking about Formaldehyde Bob."

"You," he speaks slowly, emphasising each word with a finger tapping on the table, "are never talking about only one thing." This is true. "You were talking about Robert Frazer but also about how you perceive college. And very possibly other things. Thinking for you is about much more than one person. You are a serial thinker."

I shrug. What can I say? I'm complex. I wear coloured jeans and have spiked hair and an IQ way above the norm.

"How about I drive you there tomorrow, and hang around for a bit? Out of sight, obviously. Just in case it's not for you. Just to keep me happy."

This is actually a fucking good idea. "No. I'll be fine on my own."

"I can even sit in the car and read. It would be doing me a favour, really, get me out the house."

"OK. Yeah. Dad."

"Luke."

"So, you think he likes me?"

***

Looking down at the street in the dark, I know I won't go back to The Sculpture Park because it's too much to deal with. If I do, I'll probably say the wrong thing—many times—plus I don't want to see Formaldehyde Bob getting tired of me. To make art from dark and light means understanding everything in the universe. It's impossible.

What if I make him fail?

I probably will.

I won't know what to say. He'll think I'm stupid and boring and wish he'd never asked me to help.

Quirky.

The kindest thing is not to go back.

# Chapter Four

"What do you mean he's not here?" Dad asked the rude woman. "Is he ill or something?"

"Dunno. He never showed today." She shrugged. "Maybe he buggered off home instead. Who could blame him?"

"Oh. But he told us to come today." Dad is begging. He is thinking about me being hurt and how Formaldehyde Bob could have called to let us know he wouldn't be here today. "Did he leave us a message? I left him my number in case of snow." He waits politely. "We're half an hour's drive away."

"No message."

"But what will happen to his exhibition? He only has a month to finish it. Will anyone ring him to check he's all right?"

"Who cares?" The woman looks at me once and walks away. The bricks and heaps of sand look wretched and dejected.

"Will you tell him we turned up?" Dad calls.

I am so utterly stampeded by disappointment I don't even notice the hills and trees, or the dancing waves in the lake. "Let's go," I tell Dad angrily, though it's not his fault. "It's fine. I don't care."

We stomp back to the car park in silence, with Dad trying not to stare at my face. He's looking for clues, but I'm not going to give him any. In my pocket I find a stolen biscuit.

"Luke, maybe his car broke down?"

"Don't. It's no big deal."

"Or he could have a stomach upset?"

As we approach the car, I have a sudden idea—the kind I can't ignore even when they're terrible. They're always terrible. "Wait a minute. I'll be back." I race back to the building and the rude woman. "Will you please give this to Formaldehyde Bob?" I scribble onto some paper I find in my pocket and fold it over, with the biscuit. "Make sure he gets it because it's very important. It's life or death."

By the time I get back to the car, I know it was probably my worst idea of all times.

And that is why I should never have looked at that postcard and possibilities.

***

Looking out over the street, I think about sliding into a mountain of sand and how frightening it must have been. With me, it was more of a drop through the bottom of the universe than a slide. I didn't have a lot of time to notice I was falling. But with a sandy mountain, there is probably a lot of time to worry about it.

I think about sliding until your head goes under the sand. Did Formaldehyde Bob hold up a hand for someone to hold onto? Maybe it was worse to feel your hand against the air and know that nobody took it than to die from lack of oxygen.

I think about earlier, and the free biscuit in my pocket. He must have left it there the other day.

I go hot and cold, thinking about his hand in my pocket, touching the same places I do.

I am going to give Formaldehyde Bob more chances, just so he knows I'm waiting around looking for his hand.

It's a few hours since I left the poem with the rude lady but the words are still fresh in my mind.

_Gosh,_

_Formaldehyde Bob,_

_Do they call you Rob?_

_You can steal me,_

_Away to the sea_

_Do you have red hair?_

_On your chest bare?_

_Formaldehyde Bob_

_Give me a snog._

Shit. Shit. Shit.

***

"Thank god," Dad says. "He's here! Look!" He points into the distance, and I can see it too. Down by Formaldehyde Bob's site, there is a wavy line of smoke from his furnace.

I try to pretend I don't care either way, but my zizzing is not so good at disguises. I wave around like all the world's flags. I wish I hadn't left that poem. I tell myself the rude lady never gave it to him anyway. "Does my hair look OK?"

Dad laughs. "Look, I'm going to the café. Your hair looks fine and so do the green jeans. You look cool."

When I get to the site, I act like nothing is wrong, and like I never wrote that silly poem.

"Hello," Formaldehyde Bob says without looking at me. He moves very close. His arm brushes mine.

"Hello."

He shows me his predictions about light and temperature within the glass, and I'm so glad to see him again I ziz myself into a state of blank which lasts a few hours. I am fairly certain he didn't receive that poem. I hear all sorts of things I had not considered about angles and spheres, and I am able to give Formaldehyde Bob some of my ideas in return.

He doesn't always say thank you. Sometimes he isn't even listening. It's OK. I know how overwhelming The Sculpture Park is, because every time I'm there, I ziz until I'm knackered.

"We don't need the tree," he says.

"Formaldehyde Bob," I say, "you need to include the tree, not block it off."

"No. The reason I'm blocking it off is that I want to steer what the viewer sees as they enter the bottle." He points to line upon line of explanations and scribbled numbers. "They see a V-shape of landscape. It's very important that they are given a blinkered view."

I roll my eyes. I can do anything because I'm wearing the green jeans. I place my hand flat upon his paper, covering the diagrams. "Follow me. I can't explain, but maybe I can show you."

"I don't have time." He won't look at me today. He talks from the side of his mouth, as if he wants me to miss half of his words. It makes me want to push him so he cannot hide. I know he's trying to evade me and put me off. I think of him sliding down the sand mountain and try again.

"Formaldehyde Bob, of course you have time. This is your art we're talking about and also your life. As if I need to tell _you_ they're the same thing. Stop being ungrateful and accept my support. By the way—you have crumbs in your beard. Have you been stealing biscuits again?"

His hand flies to his chin. "I don't."

"Crumbs of grumpiness."

He laughs, and it breaks the thick ice we were trying to look through. "Sorry. I'm—I'm nervous."

"Of me?" The idea is so ridiculous it makes me giggle.

"Well. Yes. You're—very—I really like your _Fall of Icarus_ jacket." He is blushing and stuttering, and right there, I see it. He's shy and wants me to like him. He's convinced himself he isn't good enough and is trying to speed up the process of failing. "We had such a good time the other day—I was scared I might not be able to keep it up."

It's uncanny. His fears are identical to my own. "You don't have to be nervous of me. I'm right about the tree."

He doesn't agree with my suggestions, and all I want to do is kiss him. "OK. Show me." He sneaks a look, and I understand he's checking to see if I'm offended that he won't accept any of my suggestions. I consider showing him that I'm a bit offended, but that doesn't matter as much as him liking me. I ziz the conundrum and it gets mixed up with the rain, and wind, and the birds.

I squeeze his arm, quick and fast, and walk towards the tree. I hope he will guess from my touch that I'm extremely horny and also that I want him to succeed, and that's why I am insistent about the tree. I might have failed at college but I still know about art and light and dark. It's a lot to convey from a squeeze, but then again, I also have the lime-green jeans that scream 'I am Mister Sexypants'.

He follows and I breathe a sigh of relief. Being an artist advisor is very draining. "Well?" he demands, grumpy-shy, hands on hips. His coat falls apart and I look at his body.

He's probably grumpy because he doesn't want to piss me off any more by having to say he doesn't agree. Underneath the open coat, his jumper has ridden up to reveal a thin strip of stomach.

He catches me staring.

What he doesn't realise—yet—is that I am actually pretty fantastic and almost never wrong about matters of art. "Stand behind me and copy my arms."

I don't know how where the bravery comes from! Normally, if someone's in a bad mood, I keep as far away as I can. With Formaldehyde Bob, it only makes me want to kiss him.

He stands so close behind I can smell coffee, the red hair on his stomach and how much I want to kiss him. I ziz, and he tries to copy, thinking I'm showing him about my idea.

When I speak, my voice is a little shaky from trying not to laugh and the unbelievable event of being with Formaldehyde Bob in The Sculpture Park. "Imagine you're a viewer."

"Yes." His voice is still grumpy but also interested, and more.

"If you can only have the V-shape, this is what you see." I hold up my hands to my face in the shape of a V. It obscures the tree and most of the landscape. "Copy me."

I sense him following my lead. I think about being in bed with him and who would decide to go first, moving, breathing too loudly, knobs, and all that stuff. I think about red and hair on his chest and thighs. I would like to roll him over and over, naked like hay, mixing up his masculine with my own.

I ziz quite loudly. "Now move your hands away, Formaldehyde Bob. What's the first thing you see?"

"The tree."

"Yes. Does it detract from your vision?"

I turn to face him. Instead of looking to the side or down, his eyes are open wide, green-blue, a cloudy day and forests. Pain, fear, shyness and want. Vulnerability, sexy, clever and sad. Horny? It might be he is just as horny as I am.

"No," he says, after a great big pause the size of Africa. "The opposite. I see that enforcing the V, while still a good idea, is not as effective as allowing the viewer to see it all. You're right."

"Exactly." My zizzing arms knock against him, but it's not rough or wrong. He doesn't move away. "I was an art student too, you know. I'm pretty clever, Formaldehyde Bob. I got to Oxford." Albeit only for one term.

I have a premonition that he is enjoying being with someone who doesn't always agree with him. I get this. It makes me wonder about who would go on top in bed. I would like to go on top.

He doesn't know what to say, so I smile, to show him I still want him to succeed and I still really, really want to kiss him.

He's trying to do something. He opens his arms and closes them again. He tries again. I can't tell what he wants. His face is very serious. He opens his hands against my zizzing arms, taking them in, experiencing their tone and rhythm. An open hand is a great thing and it's the opposite of a fist. I, I want him to like me so much it sends me into a blank. I wonder about the tree and the glass, and if Formaldehyde Bob's chin would be scratchy against my lips. I wouldn't mind that.

His hands on my zizzing deletes all the words.

Maybe he sees me struggling because he says, "You can keep calling me Formaldehyde Bob if you like. You can. But what I'd like is for you to call me Rob."

"Is that what everyone calls you? Rob?"

"No. They call me Robert. I—I just want _you_ to call me Rob. You know, as in steal." He winks. "Formaldehyde Bob, give me a snog." He beams. "A work of literature, Luke."

Oh god, the poem. For a while I can't stand up from laughing and embarrassment. "Rob. Like steal. You going to steal me?" I laugh far too loudly. "Did you put that biscuit in my pocket?"

"Maybe." He laughs too, and I can see that he does like me. He holds my arm as I stand upright and squeezes my elbow. "Do you want me to steal you?"

"God, yeah," I say. I shout.

"Me too," he says earnestly. He holds my arms, and I grab his elbows. His breath and mine meet, mists from different forests.

Dad appears and tries not to stare. "How are you doing? I see the workers have begun."

Oh, yeah, there are other people around, mingling with the sheep and ducks. I forgot about them, what with the kissy stomach and the planet spinning.

***

"Did he say why he didn't turn up yesterday?" Dad asks.

I consider lying, so that Dad doesn't think badly of Rob. "Yeah," I say slowly. "Yeah, he did. He did. He apologised too." I count to five.

"Luke. He didn't, did he?"

"No. Dad. I didn't ask him." In case it put him on the spot and scared him off.

"Does he have any family?" Dad asks as we stuff our faces for tea. I like that phrase, a lot. In a way, I do want to be talking about Formaldehyde Bob—Rob—but in another way I don't. The more I talk about him the more he infiltrates our lives. Once he's in, how will we ever shut him out again? I mean, one day, he's going back to Oxford.

I do want to. I want to talk about his beard and how it felt to be standing ever so close. I want to shout about the way he touched my zizzing arms and opened his hands into my movements, and how it caused a terrific reaction throughout my body. It wasn't only the touch, but how it felt like he was opening up to me.

I _do not_ want to talk about how it gave me a boner! Not to Dad. Though I do want to think about it, later on.

"What are you laughing for?" He pokes me with a determined finger.

"Don't know if he's got family. How would I know?"

"You didn't tell me you got _the jeans_ out. When did you do that?"

It irritates me, that he noticed and wants to talk about their significance.

"It's nothing. They're just clothes."

He chokes on his cup of tea. "Says the king of fashion."

"Dad."

"Sorry. Luke." He chuckles a bit more. It could be I do not have a metaphorical leg to stand on, seeing as I have been into clothes since the age of two and a half. For a while, I would only wear certain colours on certain days—black for Tuesday, brown for Thursday, and so on. As I grew older, it got out of hand and I was having to keep long lists of accessories, colours and fabrics. I can't explain why it was so important not to get anything in the wrong order, only that it made the day a whole lot better.

"So..." He waggles his eyebrows up and down. "Does Bob have parents?"

"No idea."

"He has a mum with pink hair." Dad is drinking a lot of tea tonight. This means he is excited by the developments at The Sculpture Park but also nervous. He's worried about me slipping backwards into depression, sliding down the mountain with no bottom. He worries about it every time I leave the house. I suppose seeing me in a half-embrace with Formaldehyde Bob was rather surprising. "And a grandfather with a wooden leg."

"He does not! Rob has no close family." I cover my mouth with my hand, realising Dad has outwitted me again.

"Ah! You do know! I knew it. And it's Rob, is it?"

"Might do."

"Well, come on then, Gok Wan. Spill the beans."

"I only know what I've read. I didn't talk about it with Rob. Not yet. Apparently, he was sent to a boarding school as a child."

"Poor boy. What did you talk about? I saw you rabbiting on with him all afternoon." Dad winks, and I wonder if he saw the hands opening up on my arms.

"Art stuff," I shrug.

***

Tonight, in the dark, I see the guys from number 56! It's late and they're returning from the pub. They walk down the street towards home with arms around each other. As they approach the pavement outside our house, they stop and fall into each other's embrace. The taller man wraps himself around the shorter. They kiss.

They stop moving for a little bit, but it soon looks like they can't stop moving! The taller one's hands move up and down the other's body and sides, and onto the sides of his face.

I, I want that.

I want that.

I want Rob to do that. He's taller than me, much stronger, and he can't look up much, but I am pretty sure—almost sure—that if we could kiss, all the gaps between the mountains would merge into one. There would be no more down, only up.

When the guys stop kissing, I have a practice go on my arm. It's not sexy or nice, and afterwards I wash my arm with soap.

He isn't going to kiss me.

I don't think I'll go back to The Sculpture Park anymore.

# Chapter Five

"Where is he?" I demand. "Where is Formaldehyde Bob?"

The woman who is always rude chews gum and looks away. "Dunno. He's having another wobbly." She points towards a closed door next to the gift shop toilets. "Sent all the workers home and says he's packing it in. He does it every few days. They wait 'til he comes back out, and we all pretend nothing happened."

"Luke." Dad pulls at my arm. "Maybe we better go? It's not our business. We hardly know him."

"It is our business!" I say. I shout. "Maybe he's sliding down the sand mountain? Did you think about that? Maybe he's alone in there." When did humans get so fucked up that someone in pain is nobody's business? "Maybe he needs proof that anyone cares."

"OK," Dad says after a few seconds, where I know he thinks about all the people at college who considered me not their business. "You're right."

"You're not allowed in there," the woman says.

"We're allowed to knock on the door." Dad raps sharply on the closed door. He turns to me and whispers, "Call through to Bob. Ask him if he needs any help."

I mean to say those very words. I do. They get mixed up with memories of when I was alone at college, alone with the blank. "Formaldehyde Bob," I say. I shout. "Are you hurting yourself?" I bang on the door until the rude lady tuts. "Get out here now if you ever want to snog me!"

"Nothing like being diplomatic," Dad mutters, laughing into his hand.

A bark of laughter erupts from the rude lady.

The door opens. Formaldehyde Bob creeps out. He crosses his arms and hunches forward. "What?" he asks quietly. "Luke!"

"Formaldehyde Bob, you have work to do! Put on your coat and get a shift on. Darkness and light won't create their own sculpture, you know." It's a gamble, giving him orders. It always works for me when I'm in a mess.

Heat from the building and worry run down my back, and now I am pissed off at him for not being ready and for not trusting me. I understand it takes time, and he can't possibly know I'm a genuine person. I wish I could fast forward us in time to when he knows this, as well as he knows about numbers and formulas. I'm also worried that he will now realise I understand about hiding and pushing people away, that I too have had bad experiences.

It's possible that he has indigestion, or was doing something legitimate like working on maths problems.

Maybe he was writing me a poem?

I ziz all that and my anxiety about the lady and if Formaldehyde Bob will ask me not to come anymore.

By now, I'm a volcano.

"You can keep calling me Formaldehyde Bob if you want. I wish you'd call me Rob." He opens his hands on my zizzing arms and leaves them there. "It's up to you."

I probably go as red as a letterbox, the type of red that goes all the way through. "Rob." He can steal me any time he wants. "Are you OK?"

"Luke. Yeah. Good—good morning. Shall we go down?" He nods to Dad. "Hello, Harry. Sorry I'm late. Bad morning. Touch of nerves." He picks up his coat and shuts the door behind him before I can check in the bins for any bloody tissues. I may be drop-dead sexy, but that doesn't stop me being alert.

This is the first time he's said my name out loud. I hope he's said it silently many times.

"Oh, no, that's all right! We were just worried in case you'd had an accident." Dad is beaming like the jolly Santas on the walls. "I'll be here in the café if you need me."

I walk down the path with Rob, trying to keep up with his long strides. I want to ask what he was doing in that room alone. I don't want him to be pissed off at me. "Were you?" I ask.

He stops almost-running. "Was I what?"

"Hurting yourself."

He touches my zizzing again, and now I know for sure it's a sign that he is opening up. His hands open with him watching my arms and body. "I've never met anyone like you before."

Hah. "You mean my hair?" I hope he doesn't mean my hair, obviously.

He squints. His hands on my arms aren't still. Not quite a caress, more like he's looking for something. "Yes, I mean your hair."

I am so relieved because now I know he has a sense of humour!

He moves his arms with mine. "What made you ask that?"

I am bombarded by memories and rushy anxiety in case I say the wrong thing. "Hope," I say in the end. "And sand."

He baulks. I've gone too far.

"Mostly hope," I say fast-fast. Hope is easier to explain than sand.

"Hope? Oh." He wants to ask more, I'm sure of it. "I wasn't hurting myself. But I appreciate you asking, and knocking on my door like that. I—I'm not used to being around people who talk about things like that. I wish I was." He looks like he wants to say more. I just wish he'd kiss me. "I'm having a lot of trouble with this." He points down towards the exhibition.

"That's because you're looking with that V-shape again. Take away your V and see the trees and the sky? They're going to be here no matter what happens to you or me. Forget the extraneous." That's rich, coming from me who gets bogged down by every minor detail. I wish he'd kiss me.

He looks at me often, more than he did when we first met. "I love your jeans, by the way. I love the purple ones too, and the green. I bet at home you've got a striped pair too." He laughs and goes red. "But tartan jeans are my favourite."

He's noticed! He remembers! I'm so shocked I slip into a blank, ensuring I look good while doing it.

"Will you wear the striped ones tomorrow?"

"Only if you promise to steal me."

"I promise."

Today, I'm wearing the tartan ones that make me look extremely bad-arse. I don't know what to say, so I smile instead and we carry on to the exhibition. His body keeps bumping against mine like he's checking I'm real. He touches me on the back, light, and waits.

I smile, big and sunny, so he knows he can keep doing that.

We stand in front of the exhibition. The workers are still finishing up, but they don't look at us.

The hand that rests on my lower back moves slowly up, and over to my shoulder.

His arm is around me. "Thanks. For checking on me. More than thanks." His voice is not sure. "What did you mean about the sand?"

His contact is playing havoc with my erection. My body is tingling and prickling and electricity. I want him to kiss me and for all this stage where we don't know each other to be over. "Your last blog, about sliding down the sand mountain."

He leans his head against mine. "Oh, that. I—I haven't been thinking about that at all. Or the exhibition! To tell you the truth, I think this place has entered my bloodstream," he says wonderingly. "I can't think straight. I'm drunk from you. I'm not thinking about sand, I'm thinking about you."

I don't know what happens during the next few minutes. One version is that I put my hand up to cover his. The other, I kiss his hand on my shoulder. Version three, I tell him I'm crazy about him.

A woman starts talking and I'm back from the blank. Formaldehyde Bob's arm is still around my shoulders and his hand is stroking the top of my arm. "What do you think?" he asks me.

"Think?" I laugh. He squeezes me and laughs too.

It's taking shape now. The base is finished, made of huge plastic bricks like Lego. There are tunnels through the block which will eventually lead into steps that go up to the platform where the glass bottle will sit.

"What isn't working?" I ask Rob. "It looks good to me. And, I know my stuff when it comes to art." I remind him of that, just in case we become boyfriends, and also because if I say it out loud enough times, I'll believe it. Maybe. I would not want to be boyfriends with someone who doesn't know about the things I can do.

He rubs his chin thoughtfully. I want to rub it too. "What you said just now—about taking away my V-shape in front of my eyes. I think you're right!" He spins around, taking in my place. It's breathtaking that he's looking at the spot where I once did tumble-overs with Dad and rolled in sheep shit. "It's—it's incredible how everything fits—the birds and animals as well as man-made sculptures. I was worried about my bricks looking completely out of place."

"But isn't that the point? They look like a kid's toy, and that symbolises play and simplicity. But then a person grows up, and the viewers move into the tunnel the same way they enter adulthood. And suddenly the darkness makes them see the plastic in a different way. Here, people are used to experiencing the unexpected." I talk fast-fast before he gets bored.

He steps back, and I have bored him, bored him shitless.

"Sorry," I say. "I'll shut up."

He takes my zizzing arms again and opens his hands, which is our code that he is open and accepting. At least, I think so. He moves more this time, stroking my arms as I ziz, rocking with me. It's incredible and sensual. I think about sex and he looks like maybe he is too. "You're amazing. So amazing. Where did you come from?" He blinks a lot, and so, of course, I end up copying this. I hope he doesn't think I'm taking the piss. "Don't ever shut up. Will you come out with me?" The last line comes out quickly, the word spilling over each other. "I really want to."

"Out?" I'll go out—in—out—shake it all about and do the hokey-cokey if he wants to. I'd rather do the hokey-pokey, hah-hah-hah.

"A date. I'm talking about a date." He squeezes my arms and edges a bit closer. "Did I get it wrong? Do you want to?"

"Yes," I say. I shout.

***

On the way home in the car, I'm so full of THE DATE I could burst the roof off and still keep climbing.

"You know the jeans collection?" Dad guesses something is up. He keeps patting my leg and grinning like a jolly Santa.

"No."

"I like the tartan ones best."

"That's what Rob said!"

Dad laughs, and it's loud and natural like how he used to laugh in the years before college. "The colours of his blog, wasn't it? Green, purple, tartan, striped and yellow?"

"OMG, how do you know that?" I am mortified and horrified, and it's also funny. For years, I wore those jeans without realising Dad knew of their significance. I just assumed he associated them with me being such a cool dude, not that I was in love with Formaldehyde Bob to such an extent I bought clothing the colours of his blog.

"Because I looked at the blog last week, and it reminded me. He hasn't been on it in ages."

"A year. Since. You know." The last time Formaldehyde Bob blogged, I was on the way out and so was he.

"And you wore the jeans to show Rob your support for his work? Aw, Luke, that's really lovely. I bet that gave him so much encouragement. He's head-over-heels for you."

"If he doesn't think I'm a stalker." Maybe I am?

We laugh, and I think about Rob's hands opening to my zizzing arms and how it felt like making love. I don't know how I could explain that to Dad.

He pats my leg. "And didn't you have matching boots, too?"

"Yeah." Doctor Martens, no less. I still have them, hidden under my bed with the yellow jeans.

"You haven't worn them since college."

"No. I couldn't face it after Formaldehyde Bob—Rob—went into the hospital." It had seemed like betrayal, to wear his colours while he was locked up. "I'll get them out tonight."

"Aw." Dad has a soft heart. "How's he doing now? He's such a nice boy. When are you going to invite him round?"

I look out of the window to think and ziz all the news. "I really—like really—fancy him." I don't know exactly how much until the words come out.

"Noooo," Dad says slowly. "Tell me something I don't know."

"He asked me on a date!" I squeak, like a mouse. "On a date!" I say. I shout.

When I come back down from the sky, Dad is trying to be pleased. He is also worried and wondering when Formaldehyde Bob goes back to Oxford. "A date! Bloody hell, kiddo. Where's he staying?"

"I dunno. How would I know?"

"Well, ask him. You could ask him to dinner tomorrow night and I'll bugger off. You need some time together."

The very suggestion of Formaldehyde Bob having dinner with me, at our house, is so outrageous I go into a blank.

***

The street is quiet tonight. Nobody but a black cat running about pitter-patter, pitter-patter. I watch him for a while before pulling out the yellow jeans and stroke the fabric. I don't know what happened to the original pair. I was wearing them the night I shut myself in and broke the bottle. I remember red blood.

I can't decide if wearing yellow would be a new start or just another way to bring back all that sadness.

On my window ledge is a bottle of sand I collected years ago from Scarborough beach. Sometimes I empty it through my fingers, enjoying the sensation of running and flow. Formaldehyde Bob started his blog with sand art, and even poetry. As he grew bolder, it moved on to sand sculptures. I guess you could say he was obsessed with sand. It was quite early on that he introduced Shadow.

At first, Shadow was a figure that followed, and then a voice. By the end, Shadow was no longer external, but part of Formaldehyde Bob, as much a part as his red-hairy arms.

I pop the cork from the lid and empty the grains onto my palm. I once did a series of experiments to see if sand created shadows. We went to Scarborough with buckets and devices. What I learnt was that sand can indeed create shadows, if the particles are in mounds.

Rob hasn't mentioned Shadow in his exhibition. I don't know if it would be safe for me to mention it, or if I'd only cause him to remember.

# Chapter Six

"I'm trying a different tactic today," Dad says gaily, about halfway to The Sculpture Park. "Can you believe it's more than a month since we came?"

"Look, you don't have to keep coming with me anymore. It's been weeks and you have things to do." Dad has worked from home since I abandoned college, building websites and programmes. "What different tactic? Don't you think Rob is feeling our support?" This worries me so much I swivel right round, like the exorcist girl. "Am I pissing him off?"

"No, no, no, I'm not talking about Rob. There can be no doubt he's flourishing under your attentions." Dad laughs softly. "He's a different person to when we first met him. You seem to be getting on like a house on fire. I've seen you messing about like two kids! Not him. I'm talking about Barbara."

Swiftly, I silently list all the other ways I'd like to give Rob attention. My face grows hot thinking about the porn I watched—again—last night. Who knew there was so much? "Who's Barbara?"

"Barbara. The rude woman. I've got this theory that most rude people are only sad or upset."

"Oh god. Please tell me you haven't invited her to Christmas dinner." He actually does that. Our Christmas Day dining table looks like the local drop-in centre. Shouty Fred from the tram always shows, plus numerous other people. Even Jim from Orange Apples came once. My grandparents and Mum have got used to it, and so, I suppose, have I. Christmas dinners are interesting events. Except for last year when it was cancelled due to me being such a failure.

Dad invites friends and sometimes special friends. When I was young, I used to invite people too. They never turned up.

"Do you think she'd like to come? She hasn't cracked a smile yet, but I'm very hopeful."

"You _like_ her!" I poke his arm. I think about Christmas Day and how much I want to invite Formaldehyde Bob. I can't find the words for this or for mistletoe and dancing. "Who else could we ask?" I breathe, innocently.

"Hmm. I wonder if you could be talking about a certain artist friend?"

"Could we?"

Dad laughs. "You could, yes. Ask him. I'm sure he'd love to come."

I think and think about the possibility of this while Dad chatters on about potential techniques to cheer Barbara up.

"Luke. How are you getting on with the workers?"

I have no idea who he means, so I don't answer, but I suspect this is a loaded question.

"You know, the twelve or so people who've been doing the bricks and that. There's John and Mike. Um. Susan and Jaz. They're a nice bunch."

"Oh, the people! I don't know. They don't want me talking to them. I just keep out of their way." I don't consider groups, or even most people, as viable. I never do. Not anymore. I see people, but I've learnt to hang my head and look the other way. It's them and us. Obviously, there are also people in the middle of the them and us, like Mum and my grandparents. I've been a lot worse since college.

"Luke! Today, try saying hello."

"No."

"Just that."

"No."

"Luke. I am your father."

"Darth Vader I am."

***

I know Formaldehyde Bob is waiting to see if I'm wearing the black-and-white-striped jeans today. He's waiting, waiting for me!

I run down the mesh path, noticing how big the exhibition has grown. Today, they're bringing in the glass bottle and fixing it in place on the top of the platform. I cannot wait to see and know that Rob has gone too far to stop.

I feel I've known him forever.

I'm not looking where I'm going, and I collide with him. He catches me.

"Whoa, steady!" We swing round and round together, clutching at each other's arms. I don't know if he's laughing or if it's me. I can taste the wind and Christmas and the trees I grew up with.

I'm, I'm dizzy.

When we stop, his arms and mine are linked. "But what's this?" He laughs, and I know what he means.

I have deliberately _not_ worn the striped jeans today, just to keep him on his toes and so he will see I'm no pushover. I laugh in his face.

"Where's the striped jeans you promised?" Hands on my body, he turns me around by the hips.

I ziz with pleasure and heat, with the absolute certainty that he likes me, and with intense arousal. His hands on my hips are firm and tight. He isn't letting go anytime soon.

He keeps me there for a few seconds with my back to him and his hands holding me together. "I've seen some gorgeous things here. But I believe this is the best."

He means me.

"You're darn right it is," I say with confidence I didn't know I had.

He turns me slowly so we're facing.

He pulls me in, to warm breath and the unbelievable knowledge that this is actually Formaldehyde Bob.

I want to stay this close to him forever, with his arms covering mine, while always giving room for zizzes.

"What striped jeans?" I say. I don't think I'm laughing as much as he is. "Don't know what you're talking about."

For an instant, I'm sure he's going to kiss me. Maybe _he_ is, too. We lean and loom like swaying trees in the wind.

It's me who makes the first move. I push myself against him, against his jeans. He's as hard as I am. "Steal me," I manage.

He's panting from swinging us around and it's hot, so hot. God, I want him on top of me, panting and out of control. Naked. I want him under me too, with his legs pulled up. Naked.

"Come on." He pulls me towards the bricks. "Into the tunnels."

I'm on a high the size of Mount Everest. "Hi," I call to the workers. "Good morning!"

"Hello."

"All right, son?"

They answer me, not awkward or false. I wave as I enter the brick tunnel. Formaldehyde Bob holds my hand, just like the guys at number 56. As we enter, the door closes behind us and we are together in a narrow passageway made of plastic. There's light and you can see out, but the view is distorted.

I, I just know it's going to happen. The air around us is suffocating with zizzy expectation, and nothing's going to get in the way. No breakdown here, no meltdown or failure.

Formaldehyde Bob pushes me so my back is against the wall. Not hard but gently, like asking.

"I," he says.

"Me too," I answer. "Me too." I shout.

I forget to close my eyes as he holds my hands and brings his head down to mine.

It's a kiss!

A kiss.

Kiss.

I remember to close my eyes when I see his lashes and how serious his expression is. I close mine, letting my head roll back so we can get a better angle.

God, the kiss.

When I watched the number 56 guys—and porn—all I saw was the spot the lips hit. It's so much more than that! His lips hit every pore, every hair, every memory and every burst of wind I ever felt.

And shit, I can feel his jeans pushing against mine, unable to stop.

Shit.

With a gasp, he stops.

"Luke," he says softly, snow and warm water. My name is a sexy moan. "I never believed anything like this would happen to me. Is it OK? Are—are you into this?"

When he pulls back a little, I keep on kissing him because I can't stop. "It's very much OK. I told you I'm free for the stealing. I don't tell lies." Which is a lie, because I do.

He comes back in for more, holding me by the waist. This time, his lips push mine apart, quite a long way.

Tongues!

Nothing like I thought it would be. I have dreaded the tongues ever since I was thirteen years old! Again, he does it tentatively, asking, checking, until I push mine back at him in affirmation. Our tongues mingle and wrestle. It's the forces of the universe, volcanoes and tsunamis. It's a thing all of itself and of everything. It's sex and holding, pushing together to get there.

He laughs into me, and I laugh back. "We've christened the tunnels," I tell him. "You took your time!" I have wanted to do this since I was fifteen years old.

"I didn't know if I was imagining things!" He strokes up and down my sides. I want his hands under my clothes so badly. "I'm not very experienced at this stuff."

"What stuff?" I love playing with him like this, making him say it.

"Kissing handsome young men in tunnels." He likes me kissing him. I can tell because his face changes every time, like he was dying of thirst and I am the water.

"What else?" God, I'm a pain. I'm going to make him tell me, and tell me.

"You know. Getting close. Getting to know you. Wanting you."

We kiss again, this time with our bodies up tight with no gaps in between. That's how I want it to be with Formaldehyde Bob, with no gaps and nothing to slip between. I, I want it all. I want the well and the sick. I want to hear Shadow the same way he does. It seems fair, swapping my zizzes with his Shadow.

"You're really something, Luke." He talks into my ear, tickling and sweet. "I can't tell you how glad I am that we met. I—I've never. I never dared hope there'd be anyone for me. The minute I saw you, I felt like we'd already met. How can that be?" He shrugs and moves his arms up and out. I can see he's struggling, so I initiate a hug, with my head on his shoulder and my nose in his neck. "You know I've got—that I'm—I'll never—" He stops with a great gulp that's almost a sob.

"Yeah. I know. I'm not exactly a typical boy you'd snog in a tunnel either."

He grins. There is a stiffness to his face that means this is very important to him. "Oh? There's a typical sort?"

"They don't wear jeans the colours of their favourite artist's blog. Not typically." I want to explain that I've had this conversation with Formaldehyde Bob many times. In my head, out loud looking into the street, on the beach at Scarborough.

"What do they wear?"

"Boring stuff."

"Typical boys don't sound like the guys for me."

"No?"

"Definitely not."

It's too much. I'm shaking. He only wants me, and I only want him. It's bold and probably unwise, but I kiss his head and talk into his red, crazy hair. "Hi, Shadow."

He goes still, and all the blood drains from me and seeps into the ground. Maybe he's not ready. He holds my face, and there are tears coming down his nose.

"Sorry," I say. "I was brought up by Dad. He talks about bloody everything! It's why I have a name for my zizzes and repeating phrases. Nothing's out of bounds in our house. I knew the word _atypical_ before my teachers did."

"Don't say sorry!" He kisses me, this time gentle and caring. It makes tears come. "It just surprised me. You're the most incredible person I've ever met. I was worried about how to explain! I think you read minds. Do you?"

"No. I think too much. Most people only think for themselves, but me, I think for everyone. I'm not always right." I'm wrong a lot of the time. "I overthink."

"Does the whole world know?" I hope that one day, he will not give a fuck if they do.

"No, no, no. Only because I was there when your blog started. I lived the sand art and the way Shadow crept in. I didn't really get it until the—when you were in the media. They said voices, and I worked it out."

"If only we'd met at Oxford."

"I know!" I can't explain how much this pisses me off. "But Dad says everything happens in time. And look—" I touch the walls of the tunnel "—it happened. It happened here, in The Sculpture Park."

When the next kiss ends, he doesn't let go of my hand. I push his hands inside my T-shirt. Despite the sub-zero temperature, my skin is burning. I let him see what his touch does to me—how my back arches asking him for the rest, how my head falls so he can kiss my neck. "Don't, don't stop."

"I've never been so horny in my whole life." He strokes my stomach, watching me move. "I've been on fire, like a teenager all over again."

"Grumpy and acne?" I want him to say it. I want to know exactly how much he thinks about me. "What kind of fire?" I'm going to squash all that shyness and make him talk.

"So horny! Three times a day since I met you."

Jesus, I'm going to think about that later on, about Formaldehyde Bob touching himself. "Good. It's because you didn't steal me sooner." I stop myself from asking for more details. I can fill in the gaps later on.

He smiles ruefully and takes his hands from my bare skin. "It happened so fast."

"Not fast enough."

He slips his hands back under my clothes and glides up my chest and out. My skin is water rippling with desire. Noises, noises, and more noises fight free. He grips my neck and we're kissing again. "Gosh. We better stop."

"Show me how the tunnel goes into the bottle," I tell his beaming face, "because if we stay here much longer, we'll be having sex on the floor." My mouth falls open when I say that word in front of him. I want to say it again. "Sex." It echoes, round and round like a promise.

The red covers his face and neck. "Yeah."

"Sex."

"Every day, I'm sure you won't come back," he confesses. "I think you'll disappear and I'll never see you again."

"But! You're the one who kept hiding! I'm not going anywhere."

"I know." He laughs, and so do I. He has gone embarrassed and shy. "I guess—do you think it's gone too far to turn back? I—I want this so much, Luke."

He could be talking about the exhibition but I don't think so. "Much too far. You haven't even seen the striped jeans yet!"

"Or the yellow ones."

He leads us out through the tunnel and up the steps onto the platform. We stand like kings, looking over The Sculpture Park. With him, I own more than the richest person on Earth. From up on the platform, the workers seemed tiny and the sheep like dots of cotton wool. "It's magic here," I tell him. "Can't you feel it?"

He still hasn't let go of my hand and this has altered me for all time.

"Yeah, I can feel it." His finger tickles my wrist.

"Are you going back to Oxford?" I have to ask, while the wind can see us and the hills I rolled down bear witness to this miracle. I hold my breath, keeping in all the years of visiting The Sculpture Park. "I don't think I'm the one-night stand sort."

"God, no. I'm never going back ever again. I'm going to live in Leeds. Once I'm sure I can manage, I'll probably start at Leeds Uni. I'm staying around, Luke. Don't think I'm the one-night stand sort either."

"Leeds? But that's where I live." I silently thank the slope and the lake.

He opens his hands on my zizzing arms. "I know. I checked on the insurance papers. I checked the day we met. I thought, he's fucking gorgeous. I wish he'd go out with me. If only he'd go out with me. I kept trying to ask."

He hugs me again, and there we stand, up on the platform, together. The hug leads to a kiss, with the wind and light rain falling like silver feathers.

There's a magic in that place, and now it's ours.

# Chapter Seven

Dad winks as I sit in the back of the car with Rob. "Why, you're just up the road from us. Two miles at the most."

Rob is holding my hand, stroking my palm with his gentle, long fingers. I am hoping that once we get home, Dad will go out so I can have him to myself. "Yes, it's not far at all."

"When do you start at Leeds Uni?"

"Not until spring at the earliest. I'm giving myself time to adjust. Maybe you could start with me, Luke?" he says. "The art department looks good. They do performance art. That's what I really love."

"But that's great! You're not doing maths?"

"God, no. I always hated it. Art's what I love. I've learnt I have to do something in life I really want." His eyes are on me. "We could start together."

"It's funny you should say that. I was looking at their courses last week. Maybe." I shrug. Maybe not. "I didn't do too well last time."

"Me either. Be nice to go with you."

"Yeah but I'd get better marks." I'm hot, from the possibility of going to college with Rob.

"We could steal the free biscuits together."

We park at home. "Look, I'll drop you guys off while I pop to the shops for some last-minute Christmas shopping. Luke will look after you, Rob. See you soon."

"OK." I love my Dad.

I unlock the door and take Rob into the lounge. It's very strange, seeing my teenage idol next to the bookcase. He's wearing bright-green socks with a hole where his toe pokes through. "I can't believe you're here."

"Never seen you without a coat." He grins. He unzips mine.

"I'm even more sexy than you knew." I peel off my jumper. I want him to see me in short sleeves, just so we get it out of the way.

"Not possible." We stand together, and I am as alert and aware as I've ever been. I ziz the lemon candle and the tick-tock clock, and Rob's nervousness. "Hi," he says.

I pull him onto the sofa so he's facing me. "Hi."

He runs his hand from my little finger, up my lower arm. He turns my arm so he can see the scars. He brings my arm up and kisses it. "Me and you," he says and smiles sadly.

"Yeah. But there's this. There's us." It's out the way now. My heart is thudding so loudly I feel a bit strange. Maybe he does too. He carries on stroking my arm, up over my biceps and on to my face. His eyes are intense and serious, his face a little red. We are a glass balancing on the edge of a table, a drop of rain ready to fall. I ziz and ziz. I have to break the spell.

I do it with a kiss. I let my hand stay on his face, over his beard. I try to force all the words into that kiss, all the hopes and ideas of the things we can do together. Lunches and dinners, college and work, walks by the sea and sitting on freshly mowed grass.

The emotion sweeps and rollers me.

I want him to take his clothes off and for us to make love. I know he won't, and that it's much too soon.

He is gentle, kissing me back but keeping his hands to himself. "You can touch me," I tell him. "I'm free as the biscuits."

He moves my head carefully so it's close to his and kisses my nose. "I've never done any of this before," he whispers. "Have you?"

"Hah! What do you think?"

He shrugs. I love it, that he thinks I actually might have been with a man already. Up close, he's beautiful—green-blue eyes framed with long lashes and beyond that, red, red hair.

"I don't know. Probably."

"OK, well, yeah. I've slept with two hundred men. And that was only last month." I try licking around the edges of his lips. I laugh a bit, because the suggestion of me being a serial sexer is absurd.

"Oh, yeah?" He makes a soft noise and opens his mouth for my tongue to move in. "How did you manage to fit them all into your day?"

I'm bolder now, laughing, and wanting. I roll him so he's on his back, and I sort of climb on so my body covers his. "I haven't. Not even a kiss."

We breathe together. "I should tell you, I'm probably going to be spectacularly awful at sex," he says, a little shaky. His confession is so tender I almost cry. "I want it to be special, but I'm worried I'll just be terrible."

"Why? And what would spectacularly awful sex look like?" I hold his face still to kiss, and kiss, my body starting to move a little bit. He holds my back and, after a while, strokes my body up and down. "What I want to know, is how we get from here to how it looks on porn. I mean, they don't ever do this stage."

I love his laugh and the dimple that pops into his cheek. "Well, spectacularly awful sex would probably be over very quickly."

"That wouldn't be awful," I tell him. "We could time each other. See who can get under five seconds first."

When he stops laughing, I pull him up and give him the tour. He is very touched by seeing his art on my bedroom wall. "Aw, Luke." We sit together on my bed talking. It's the stuff of dreams, but actually, it's not mega or too much. I show him my books and photos of when I was young, and we loll on the bed.

"Where's your mum?" he asks.

"She doesn't live with us. Hasn't since I can remember. What about your family?"

He strokes my arm with one finger. "Well, I've got parents and two sisters. They're all very successful. My sisters are much older than me. I'm the baby."

"But they're nice?"

He is very careful, and precise about where to touch. There is nothing clumsy about Rob either in the way he speaks or how he glides over my hypersensitive skin. He watches me shiver in response to his trailing finger. "Yeah, they're nice. I tried for a long time to do what I thought they wanted. One half of me liked the maths, but the other wanted art. Yearned for it. I don't know why now, but at the time I didn't think I could pick art." He shrugs. "Seems stupid now. I mean, they're all financiers and accountants, but of course they want me to be happy. They—they didn't know about me being so sick, either. Not until the hospital."

"You pushed yourself too hard." In my teenage imagination, I had imagined Rob's family as mean old bastards.

"Almost split myself in two. I was ashamed. Is that what happened to you?"

I considered. "No. With me, I hadn't realised how _much_ I'd miss things! Like the morning birds and light coming under my curtain—things Dad says—even the hedgehog. I—I was lost. I had no idea how important all the things are that make up my, my, the lines of my life." It didn't sound much, out loud. "I fell off the washing line."

He watches me for ages, eyes shining. "Bring me into those lines?" he says. "I won't ever ask you to leave them. You don't need to leave them. Maybe we can make some new lines?"

This kiss, I put my hands under his T-shirt and feel the hairs and planes of his stomach. I stroke across his body and up to his chest. He leans back onto his hands to give me free access. He gasps and breathes hard, clearly aroused by everything I do. As if he's waited for me all his life.

"Have you waited for me your whole life?" I ask, because I'm a pain in the arse.

"I really have."

"Good. I'll make you wait a bit longer."

For lunch, I cook cheese on toast, with my famous signature herbs on top. I could easily get used to him being around, meeting before college, watching TV at night. He watches me ziz and opens his hands on my arms. "I love this, by the way," he mutters. "You're very..." he pauses "...fluid. You soak up everything around you, and everything you're feeling. Is soak the right word?"

"Dad says I'm a sponge but I prefer to use the word sex-god."

His dimple appears. "I've never met anyone like you."

I busy myself cooking and try not to drop dead with pleasure. "Are you going to start the blog again?"

"Maybe. I will if you'll help me. I'll need a new colour, for starters."

"Red," I say. "I'd look good in red jeans."

"I haven't seen yellow yet."

"I'm saving them for the exhibition launch."

***

The morning of the exhibition launch is Christmas Eve. I wake up at four a.m. and look for his blog. When it flashes, and I see he's made a post, I cry and cry. I cry for all that's past and the scars on my arms. I cry for Rob, Shadow, and a lone hand struggling through the sand.

I wipe my eyes and look at the blog.

It's overwhelming. I go into a heady-heady blank.

He's so clever at that stuff! Red hearts and balloons flow from sand particles, flashing like memories or hints of times to come. The promises turn into yellow daffodils and pictures of The Sculpture Park in spring. He incorporates all his memories of me, like the café and our bench outside the Longside Gallery, now covered with snow. Red heart balloons blowing in the wind, fighting to be released. I'm crying again, but it's different. I know this blog is meant for me. I can see his memories of The Sculpture Park are snapshots of our time together, as if he can't imagine the park existing without me.

Finally, the blog turns into a live stream for his exhibition, which is his way of coming out, inviting people to come and see his work at The Sculpture Park. Any old fans who check the blog will know that Formaldehyde Bob is back.

The glass bottle shines in the dark, waiting. It's a few hours yet until Rob stands up inside and declares his exhibition open. There'll be media and cameras, and lots of people watching. I hope he's going to be all right with all that.

But there's something else. A fence I don't recognise has sprung up about twenty yards from the plastic bricks. Along the sides, some words have been painted. It's still dark, but I can just make out the letters.

No More Down.

I don't know what's behind that fence, and it worries me into a knot of lead.

My phone bleeps.

_Morning kisses, Luke_ _._ _I have a surprise for you. Rob xx_

# Chapter Eight

Dad and I try not to slip. It snowed in the night, and the path is pure and unbroken, but treacherous. We're later than planned because of snow and because of the meltdown I had this morning. "Luke, calm down. It's going to be OK. Luke?"

I, I'm in a state. I wish it was over and I was back at home with Rob. He's coming to my house after the launch and staying until after Christmas. I'm going to get him for four whole days. Last night, I put sheets on the spare bed and knew he'd be sleeping there. He doesn't realise, but early on Christmas morning, I'm going to creep in so we can wake up together.

"Do you think he'll like the presents?" My voice is wild. "There's only so much sand-related stuff a person can buy." I laugh so hard it ends in tears. "I bought him a whole box of biscotti."

Dad stops, gathers and holds me. He strokes my back until I stop shaking. "Luke. What are you most worried about? Pick the top five."

"Dad. People seeing _me_ and wondering what he's doing with such a loser. Nobody turning up for his launch. Millions turning up. People criticising him. Rob being devastated. Mainly the first one."

"Aw, love." He holds me close and some of the anxiety and expectation eases out of my body and runs off into the snow. "Luke. You know, I'm not sure he'd care about any of that. All he wants is you here. That's enough for him." He kisses my head. "You're so far away from being a loser. I wish you could see that."

"And there's a surprise! I hate surprises!"

Dad considers, and I guess he's thinking about telling me what the surprise is. I know because he doesn't ask what surprise I'm talking about. Rob already told him, to check if I could handle it.

"Do you want to go home? We can. I'm sure he won't mind."

"I do want to. I want to go home and get in bed. But Rob didn't, did he? All the times he tried to at the beginning, but he always came back. I have to be here! I want to be here for him."

It's The Sculpture Park that kicks my arse into gear. It starts snowing again, falling onto my hills and trees. I know it's for me and Rob. This place won't ever let me down.

"It's snowing." Dad holds his palm out.

I wipe my eyes. "Do I look like shit?"

"No."

We run now, along the snowy path. From quite a long way off, the crowds are visible. "See? That's number one ticked off," Dad gasps. "Plenty have come."

"They better be polite."

We get nearer, and I have no idea how I'll cope with so many people. The event organisers have erected low barriers so Rob's exhibition doesn't get trashed by too many stamping feet. I can't hear anything except talking, talking, talking. There's no sign of Rob, and I know I'm about to make an idiot of myself.

I turn away. Dad takes my hand. "Luke. Listen to me? I promise, the surprise is good. It's brilliant. So is Rob, and so are you. At least stay and find out what it is. It's—something you kept asking for. It's Rob's message to the world."

Barbara appears. "There you are! We're waiting for you." To my amazement, she kisses Dad's cheek. I keep very close to his side and away from the audience. Barbara shouts, "They're here! Luke and Harry are here!"

Everyone looks, and I ziz, and ziz my plea to The Sculpture Park to please, please, make this good for him. I offer myself and everything I have as a bargain. All I can taste is blood from biting my tongue and acid I tell myself is not defeat.

Silence descends, dropping with the snowflakes.

It begins. The light comes up gradually, like a sunrise. It starts beneath the plastic bricks, as if lifting the exhibition.

It's spectacular. The colours flash repeatedly, warnings of a manic life with no time for people like Rob and me. Around the edges of the base, the art from Rob's blog begins to appear in short films. And everywhere, snow falls, sparkling flakes of wonder, enhancing the visage.

This is Rob's time, his chance, his opportunity to release everything that's inside. He holds nothing back. The films reveal the last desperate days, when he was begging for help.

I'm not holding it in. I shake and shake, despite Dad's arms. I'm, I'm back in my college room watching the last caption and knowing the down is coming.

At first, the sound is a whisper, and now shouting... "Formaldehyde Bob, Formaldehyde Bob!"

They love it. They want him out here, and now I see they want to support him too, stamping feet in their desire to see him go up, and not down. I was wrong. I believed people would come only to mock and jeer. Their sadness and love is thick enough to touch, bursting through the air in a series of shouts and cries, like electricity before thunder.

In a rush, I wonder if I was wrong about the other students at my college. Maybe it was me, shutting them out.

I love him.

Poor Dad, he is trying his best. "Hold tight, my love."

Finally, the lights flicker and fade, and the glass bottle begins to hum and vibrate with light. The crowds gasp and cheer. The bottle is shimmery, ghost-like, not real. The exhibition captures elements of early morning; the mist that turns into loud birdsong; the wonder and relief that night is over.

We wait, and wait, until at last the shadowy figure of a man stands up inside. He doesn't look real, not quite man, not quite shadow. He places his hand against the glass, and as he does so, the glass changes colours. Purple, green, yellow, tartan and stripes. The last colour is bright fire-red, leaping flames and rebirth.

Behind Rob, a shadow appears. It stands above, before swirling around Rob's body until they are one.

Tears are running down my face. I join in the chanting... "Formaldehyde Bob, Formaldehyde Bob!"

The sound is so loud I go completely blank. I'm not sure what happens. One version is that I scream and cover my ears. Another is that I run away, back to the car. The version I like the best is that I get through it, and nobody notices me.

When I open my eyes, Dad is talking through the cheers. "Luke? Darling? He—he's waiting for you."

"What?"

Formaldehyde Bob has come back through the tunnel to the outside. He waves to us and waits with his hand outstretched.

There is no way I can walk past all the people looking, through the lighting and the brilliance. There is no chance at all, not even an infinitesimal one, that Formaldehyde Bob could be waiting for me. It's just not possible. "It's OK if you can't. He said to tell you that." Dad takes my hand. "But he wants you there with him. He said all this is for you."

I can't move.

I think of all the times I have been happy in The Sculpture Park, the years of adventure and acceptance. They flash like dancing memories in my exhausted brain. This is my place and it has never let me down. I think of the kiss in the tunnels.

"I'm ready."

We walk past the audience to Formaldehyde Bob. He is anxious, looking for my face, his eyes drawing me close. I want this to be perfect for him, I want this to be perfect for him.

"Luke," he calls. "Luke!" His voice gets inside, and makes me brave. He hugs me tightly. "Luke, my Luke," he whispers. I look up into his eyes and I think, _fuck you_ _,_ _world, I am going to do this._

"Are you coming too, Harry?"

"I think I better."

Rob leads us into the tunnels and shuts the door. He falls on me, kissing and kissing. "I worried this might be too much. Are you OK?" He hugs me like it's going out of fashion.

I nod. Relief that he's happy and the exhibition is a success ziz me, like a warm bath and strong wine. I'm shitfaced drunk on gratitude. Later, once the words have returned, I'll be able to tell him how bloody fantastic his exhibition is.

He holds my hand very tightly and we walk through the tunnels and up into the glass bottle. "If you could come with me, I'd be forever grateful. But I understand if you can't." He beams. Red hair stands up and his eyes blaze. "Either way, I'll be back in a couple of hours."

"I'm coming."

He waves at the crowds through the bottle and now takes me back down to a disguised opening I didn't know was there.

"Where are we going? You kept this well-hidden."

The dark tunnel is about twenty yards long and at the end is a door. He pushes it open, and when we go outside, I recognise the fence.

Stretched out on the snowy ground is a long balloon and a basket. Rob nods at a man and the air begins to blow inside.

"OMG."

"Up," Rob says, laughing. "We went into the bottle and came out, and now we're going up in the air balloon. No more down. It's time we went up, Luke. Meet Mick. He's going to take us up."

I just cry.

Dad rubs my back. He looks from me to Rob, and a battle is on his face. He wants to come to make sure I'm safe, but he also wants me to be alone with Rob so we can kiss and cuddle, and so the air balloon can be ours. I guess being a parent is like that. "You two go. Be safe. I'll be waiting with the car." He hugs us and walks back with Barbara.

It doesn't take very long for the balloon to inflate and the basket to be ready. Mick beckons us in, and the fence falls away like a pack of cards folding.

We climb into the lurching basket. The people cheer and cheer as the balloon takes us up, up, up into the sky. Formaldehyde Bob and I shout "Up!" as loudly as we can, until we are floating above the world.

***

Up!

Rob holds me from behind, with both arms. He rubs my face with his, and I am happiness, only happiness. "Shit. Look how small everything is. And it's freezing." I grip his arms with my own and wonder if the last five weeks are a dream. "It's so beautiful."

"Are you Sexypants69@gmail.com?" he asks. "That was you, wasn't it?"

I remember the email with the competition details I sent him, so long ago. "No. Absolutely not."

"Yes, you are." He kisses my neck. "This, it's all down to you, Luke. You got me here and you made me succeed. Do you see what you can do? See how amazing you are?"

The balloon lurches, and it's dreaming and living all mixed up. I don't let go of his arms. I might never let go. "Are you real? Is any of this real?"

"I love you," he tells me, in his quiet voice, full of emotion. "That's real. You're the best thing that ever happened to me. All this is nothing compared to you. Nothing. This is for us, Luke. For us."

I turn to face his green-blue eyes and my future. He catches my ziz and we kiss pure silver snowflakes and white fire. "Me too," I say. "I'm in love with you."

We wander through the white landscape, eating from a picnic hamper and listening to Mick's tales of people throwing up and trying to have sex in his basket. Rob is the most relaxed I've ever seen him, like a burden has been obliterated. He can't keep his hands off me, and this is very much OK. As soon as I get him home, I intend to feed him mince pies and sherry. Tomorrow, I'll introduce him to Mum and my grandparents.

We go back down to the ground, a couple of miles away from the exhibition, where Dad and a few people wait. Climbing out, my legs wobble and I don't feel steady.

I fall into the back of the car with Rob, utterly exhausted. Christmas is almost here.

"What are we going to do next year?" I ask drowsily. "What can beat today?"

"Up. We're going up."

# Epilogue – Glass Man

It became obvious the glass bottle and I were not separate things. It wasn't me and it. The walls that had kept me safe began to throb and glow. A transformation was taking place.

I began to dream.

I tried to hide from the truth. I closed my eyes and envisaged a world different to my own. A world where I didn't have to retreat inside my own head to find meaning.

My dreams were startling and vivid, but not extraordinary. Laughter, connection, sharing. I tried to catch elusive echoes that might have been friendship.

The throb became my body. I was hurting, hurting deeply. I probed the glass, and knew it was a part of me.

I accepted defeat. Turned my back on the staring people. Accepted that the glass and I were meant to be. We were together, but alone.

I started going out, into the world, always within the confines of the bottle.

I went through the motions, like a puppet playing at life. I saw people and heard their words without feeling anything. I was a wooden doll, hollow and functional. I didn't expect or look for more.

One day, a boy appeared at the edges of my bottle. I didn't worry. He couldn't get in.

I was wrong.

The boy ignored the bottle! He threw things at my walls. Biscuits, jeans, a new name, silly poems, jokes and spiked hair. He laughed at my years of sand collection, ignored protocols and unspoken rules.

What had seemed like a sealed doorway was suddenly revealed as a portal. It had been open all along and I'd failed to notice, so entrenched was I in solitude, so sure of my prison.

He stepped inside.

I tried to ignore him. I tried not to look.

But there was something else, something I had not considered.

My heart.

It didn't take very long.

"Hello, Shadow," Luke said.

My heart!

He saw my prison, and he understood. I cast aside the extraneous, and stood, revealed. Despite the glass and Shadow, perhaps because of, in celebration, certainly with acceptance, he offered his hand anyway.

There will be days when I'll have to come back, inside the glass. There's going to be downs as well as ups. And when I do, he'll be right there with me.

I took his dear hand, gripped it with love. We walked out of the bottle together and went up into the sky.

The end.

# About the Authors

Claire Davis and Al Stewart are UK authors and friends. Claire spends her time grappling with facts and figures while Al is a champion of young people, cats and slippers.

# Young Adult Titles  
by the Authors

**Tork and Adam Series**

_The Invasion of Tork_ (Boughs of Evergreen)

_The Invasion of Adam_

_If I Should Stumble_

_Shut Your Face, Anthony Pace_

_Nobody's Butterfly_

_Up!_

# Beaten Track Publishing

For more titles from Beaten Track Publishing,

please visit our website:

<http://www.beatentrackpublishing.com>

Thanks for reading!
