A Loan

I was always partial to being left alone with my own thoughts. It seemed like simple math, less people meant less worries and less distractions. But on the long train ride to a relatively posh part of Wales, it felt different. It felt uncomfortable, and not just because I had elected to wear my hoodie to save on luggage space. I might as well have been on the express train to a cinema so I could experience the world’s first 4D showing of ‘The Anxiety-ville Horror’. On the pain train, the only people I had for company were the random dudes further down the carriage, a packed lunch, a Nintendo DS, a mysterious black notebook (I think my aunt said it was ‘mole skin’?) and my previously discarded coat. And the heat.

An unnecessarily long 15 minutes into the journey, wherein my carriage plummeted into the red sun like an inverted Icarus, I took the hoodie off. I would come to regret complaining about the heat of that summer when Wales would become blanketed in perpetual precipitation for the remainder of however long time lasts. Among my thoughts concerning the book, the least distressing ones were concerning its material composition. So naturally, I started thinking about moles. I was wondering if a mole was a rodent. My intuition was telling me it was (it was wrong). I would not have been able to google the answer on my phone at the time. They weren’t rats at any rate. Otherwise, there would not be mole-rats, or their naked, nacho-eating brethren that made it onto the kind of children’s television I watched back then. I was told not to open the contents of the notebook until I turned 18. 5 years and 11 months until I would be allowed to read it. I asked everyone involved, from the social worker to my aunt, if it had anything to do with a will, and they said no. Was good to know I would not lose any money over it, not that my dad had any money.

My destination was a boarding school. My dad had asked that I get sent there in the event of his death. My mum, who had long since divorced my dad, had died 4 years before. I was staying at my aunt’s house in Wales, while my dad was dying back home in London. It was a long summer, but not long enough. I hadn’t even visited the school; I didn’t really want to. Like I didn’t really wanna go to my mum’s funeral. As a result, although I knew the school was an option and I sat an exam for it, I didn’t know anything about it. Regarding the school, and everything else there were so many unknowns.

Was the boarding school good? I mean, it should have been, right? That is what the extra expense is for. Besides the lodging and stuff, I supposed. Where did the money for the school come from? Would I be the only Black kid there? I mean, probably not, there is bound to be one or two more at least. Would any of us be ‘allowed’ to be Black? Would we be pressured into acting ‘white’ or conforming to what a white kid’s idea of Blackness is? “Oh God, what if I’m actually the only black kid there?” My train of thought (ha-ha!) was interrupted by a conspicuously large man in black asking if everything was alright. At least, I thought that was what he said, I struggled to parse his accent. I gave him some unconvincing assurances and waved him goodbye. My eyes gave the notebook a glance then darted towards the window.

Would I even fit in at school regardless of that stuff? I was never the most popular guy. Although I lacked in charisma; I think I made up for in politeness. I ended up being mentored by a guy who was famous in my school for having a bad temper and tearing a door off his hinges. A bunch of sixth-form students buddied up with a few of us randomly selected kids for a trip. Everybody else got the regular degular older students. I got the Hulk. Dude said I was the “nicest kid I have ever met in my life”. In hindsight, he probably did not know that many kids, he was probably 19, max. And of course, I did not want to be perceived as anything less than a nice guy to ‘Big Man the Destructor’. To be fair, he seemed like a chill person. I could relax with him and the other guys. Though he might have just taken pity on me. Maybe the kids at the new school would take pity on me too? I’d hate that.

Man, my dad picked an inconvenient time to die. If he was going to croak so close to my birthday, could he not have done it on my birthday? Defying the odds and going to the great beyond on my 12th could have got me in the news. Might have gotten a cool billionaire ward. I imagined sympathy would be a lot less annoying if got to sleep on a bed of money. Six hours difference was all that stood between me and endless wealth.

Am I a bad person for ever thinking that? Pretty sure he did his very best not to perish during one of the most formative days of my life. Well, formative on paper. I don’t think it’s a good enough notion to put in a lavish secret mole book. I’d perhaps write it on a yellowed receipt that you might find in an old wallet. With a pencil to really emphasise how non-committal I am (and was) to prescribing any importance to my 12th birthday. The day itself was like any other day, and I had been expecting dad to die for a long time. He had been hospitalised multiple times. I had been displaced multiple times. My aunt couldn’t have had too much longer to live either. But she didn’t go on holidays all the time. My dad was insistent we go to New York at some point, even though I think we were both surprised he survived the rigours of the recent Disneyland expedition.

When he died might not have been a matter of effort at all. Things just tend to happen. I got my leg caught in an overcrowded bus door once and fell outwards into the pavement. If the rest of the passengers had to tell the bus driver before he drove off, I might have been dragged around the city or ended up under the bus. Running late to school another time, after missing every bus, I barely avoided a hedgehog only to end up tripping and curb-stomping myself. I’m not a very lucky guy.

I couldn’t really say I’m unlucky either. I’m not starving in a shantytown. Or riddled with cancer. Or both. My dad spent most of his pension on me, and though half my family was estranged and the other half in another country, at least I had a family. There was this one time I ended up in a foster home for a day after my dad left me home alone and a neighbour complained. Of the two other children there, one had sizeable dents in his head and face and the other had an intimate relationship with an oxygen tank. Yet, there was this contentment to them that I both admired and envied.

There were other times I almost croaked like a frog in cement shoes: the time when I was five, slipped on a rug and hit my head on a radiator. Lost a lot of blood. If it wasn’t for the kindly Japanese student my dad had invited as tenant earlier that month, I’d have surely died. The earthquake in Crete was dire. The car crash outside our hotel. That time my friends overestimated my head's ability to withstand a rock, thrown at roughly the speed of light. Man, the bus door was really embarrassing, I’m certain that ended up on everyone’s flip phones. Thought I was going to have a heart attack when I lost my trading cards to a washing machine. The asthma attacks. Survived all of that.

But if I were lucky, would I really have gotten in these incidents to begin with? You could have made the argument (and I did) that they were valuable learning experiences, with mental scars I could wear as an invisible badge of honour. They did go some way towards keeping my expectations grounded, yet also allow me to expect the unexpected. Still, if valuable lessons or good fortune were cheese, the nachos of misfortune were spread too thin and too deep to give my soul any peace. It was like the luck was a loan, and I was paying in interest with all the bad luck. The frequency in which I’d found myself in upsetting circumstances had gotten too improbable for my taste. I wouldn’t have been able to articulate it as such, but I felt like I was losing my autonomy. Adrift in a sea of circumstance and getting sucked into a whirlpool of uncertainty.

Where did my dad even get the money from? Did he sell a kidney, even though he was dying? Was the death all an elaborate plan to send me to boarding school? Did he fake his death? Is the money a loan from a criminal syndicate? Am I going to be responsible for paying this all back? Was I gonna have to kowtow to the overly rigid, hyperformal, soul-killing demands of a private school? Be moulded into the kind of creature that inflicts terrible circumstances on others, rather than saves them?

The big, vaguely European guy from before placed some crisps in front of me and walked ahead to the next carriage. Crisps. Nachos. Naked mole-rat. My hand reached out to the book. “Sorry dad, I couldn’t leave things to chance.” Being the master of my own destiny just felt like the ‘good’ thing to do at that moment. The notepad looked a lot smaller now. The edges were rounded, and the cover felt like velvet. I opened the book and let the forbidden contents overwhelm me.

“Happy birthday Saul, however old you are when you open this. Probably twelve, if so, please listen in future!”. Signatures and well wishes. Confessions of donations. I think everyone I ever knew contributed towards the school fund, from Japanese graduates to Bruce Banner and foster homes. I owed everyone in that notebook a lot before this.

“You are not a burden. You are not an investment. At worst, you are a dream. At best, you are my son and so much more!”

I dunno if it was from the perspiration or the tears, but the notebook got a bit damper and felt a lot heavier. But I felt lighter than ever. Might have even smiled the goofiest smile.

I’ve always liked being left alone with my own thoughts. But there is something to be said about being left with other’s thoughts, too. Thinking about it, I was never left with my own ones. I was loaned their thoughts. And it’s up to me to pay those forward, with interest.