The First Person: And Other Stories - By Ali Smith Page 0,38

underneath the table just above its bar. I realize I don’t know whether she’s smiling because a boy pushed her down a hill, because a girl picked her up at the bottom of it or because an art teacher I know she’s got a crush on asked her to take off her clothes.

Then I realize it’s because of all three. I remember my hands in the warm pockets of the adult coat.

It moves me. She can see this on my face and she gets annoyed again. Her smile disappears. She scowls.

Written is so much better than writ, she says.

It might be better but it isn’t what it actually says on the gravestone, I say.

Weirdo, she says.

Don’t be rude, I say.

From Weirdoland, she says almost under her breath.

She gives me the quick look and then, with perfect timing, the artful look away.

Completely night now out beyond my house and only six o’clock in the evening. All the streetlights are on. All the cars in the city beyond are nosing their ways home or their ways away from home, making the noise traffic makes in the distance. Closer to home, out on the unlit common, under a sky that promises frost, someone invisible to us is rattling across one of the nearby paths on a bike, shouting and shouting. I love you, he shouts, or she shouts, hard to tell which, and then calls out what sounds like a name in the dark, shouted into the starry air above all the thousands of old dead, and then the words I love you again, and then again the name.

My fourteen-year-old self looks towards the window and so do I.

You hear that? we both say at once.

astute fiery luxurious

A parcel arrived. It looked really creepy. There was nobody in the house but me. I phoned you. You were still at work and very busy.

Uh huh, what now? you said.

A weird parcel came, I said. It’s got our house number on it and the correct postcode and everything, but it’s not addressed to us and I didn’t notice until after the postie had gone.

I told you the name on the parcel. You said you’d never heard of him or her.

Me neither, I said.

It’s just a misdelivery, you said. We’ll put it back in the post tomorrow. Look, I’m busy. I’ve got to go. Are the pills working? Are you still sore?

A bit, I said.

Have a sleep on the couch, you said.

I can’t, I said. I am less than one person in a hundred and the pills are keeping me awake.

Go and watch daytime TV, then, you said. It’s your prerogative. You’re signed off.

I can’t, I said. I am less than one person in a hundred and the pills are making me sleepy. Plus I am now unable to operate machinery.

I’ll bring supper, you said laughing. Listen, I’ve got to go.

You hung up. The laughing had made me feel a bit better. But when I went back into the front room the parcel was still there.

Last week we were in the supermarket and saw they were selling Swingball. I hadn’t played it for twenty years and got nostalgic about how good I used to be at it. We bought it, stuck its metal stick in the lawn and played it. The next day I kept hearing a crackling noise, first when I was on my bike, then whenever I went up or down stairs. The noise was coming from under the skin of my left knee. Then the knee got sore, then the leg. Then I woke in the middle of the night unable to move anything from the shoulders down without it hurting. For the past three days I had been taking anti-inflammatories and lying on the couch monitoring myself for any of the fifty-nine side effects the leaflet warned were to varying degrees possible (including stomach pain, dizziness, changes in blood pressure, swollen legs, feet, face, lips, tongue or all of these, indigestion, heartburn, nausea, diarrhoea, headache, itchy skin, abdominal bloating, constipation, chest pain, vomiting, ringing in ears, weight gain, vertigo, depression, blurred vision, hair loss, serious kidney problems, inability to sleep, sleepiness, paranoia, hallucinatory episodes, and heart failure). So far I had possibly had two or three of them. But I wasn’t sure if my ankles and feet had always been that shape, or whether I was imagining the high airy humming in my ears, like a faraway sea. Was I depressed? I had been getting up off the couch every few hours