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Cai’s grandmother’s name was a carefully guarded secret, as was her age, as was much about her. He called her Nonnie, but so did his grandfather, Dominic, and Cai had always suspected that Nonnie was just his childhood word for grandmother that she’d adopted as her nickname now for everyone she met.
Cai called his grandfather lots of different things, depending on what others words were passing between them at the time, but he only ever called Nonnie Nonnie.
Nonnie’s favourite saying was ‘I wouldn’t know anything about that.’ This frustrated Cai when he was younger and he was asking important questions like why water got bubbly when it was hot and how did a piano work. But as he got older, he started to work out that her favourite saying was a test. A test of how he’d react when the clear cut answers weren’t handed to him on a silver platter. As he got older (and after Dom had pointed it out once on his twelfth birthday) he started to notice the look in her eye whenever she said I wouldn’t know anything about that. A twinkle in her eyes that said yes, boy, I know everything there is to know about that.
And recognising that twinkle was the first step to discovering what Nonnie did know. He just had to work for it.
She told him ‘I could tell you everything I know, of course, but truth will never feel like truth until you’ve learned it for yourself. A mother can explain why fire is hot to her child but the child can’t understand that till he gets too close to the flame himself’ when she pushed the phone book toward him and told him that if he could use this old tool to find out where his father lived she would let him go and visit. The rest of the discovery was all up to Cai.
He'd met his father before, of course, but he'd lost all contact with him while his mother was getting sicker and sicker. Cai hadn't wanted to speak to him at all and Ross seemed okay with this arrangement and hadn't pushed it. But Cai was twelve, now, and thought he should try to know his father.
He rode his bike over to Ross’s house to meet him one morning in January, a couple of days after his birthday. He hadn’t seen his father since his mother’s funeral, two years ago.
He hoped for a lot of things that day, but didn’t find any of them. His father had another family, a third family, and he was the awkward, out of place, brown bastard son.
Cai biked home in the winter air, trying valiantly not to cry on Nonnie as she opened the door to him and wrapped him up in her arms. She hadn’t told him he was going to be disappointed, she hadn’t promised him anything except that she and Dom would always be here when he was ready to come home. Cai did cry, but he fought every one of his sobs, trying to contain each one till his face was red with it. He was twelve for gods sake! He was almost a man. When they were twelve, Percy Jackson started his quests, James Adams was recruited by Cherub, Harry Potter had defeated Voldemort twice already and Toph was one of the best earthbenders ever. Cai reminded himself of all their achievements, told himself it was stupid to be sad about a man you didn’t even know really, and stopped crying.
By the time next January rolled around and his thirteenth birthday was approaching, Cai hadn’t done anything spectacular. He wasn’t in the position to be defeating dark wizards, he hadn’t been approached by any secret spy agencies, and the closest he got to earthbending was throwing clods of dirt at his friends at London College.
But then a girl called Gloria Giersbergan bought a gun to school and shot him in the back. He died briefly during surgery when the surgeon was attempting to get the bullet out of him. They revived him, and decided not to attempt to remove the bullet after all.
Now, he carried it round inside of him like a token. He thought about it a lot, how alive his body was as this incredibly structure built around this instrument of death. How his heart beat on when it had come so close to stopping for good.
He thought about it a lot when he fought with his grandfather. Since he started Year Twelve he’d been butting heads with Dominic more and more often, although they were both careful not to start when any of the foster kids were staying over, both aware of what kind of homes they’d come from.
Cai's issues with Dom stemmed from the fact that Cai wanted to leave school at the end of this year and become a builder, or a furniture maker, or something where he could do something practical for the world. He loved the idea of building houses that people would live their lives in. He loved the idea of building churches, or carving pews that people would find comfort and faith in.
But Dominic wanted him to stay in school all the way to the end, even though Cai had no intention of going to university afterwards. He’d do an apprenticeship somewhere; he didn’t need a university degree to prove to the world he was useful. And he didn’t want to start his adult life by getting into thousands and thousands of pounds worth of debt.
After he’d stormed off to his room he would put his hand over the bullet and tell himself God saved my heart for something bigger than this. He’d tell himself he had purpose, he had reason, and that reason was not to make the world a nastier place by fighting with Dom. Miracles weren’t supposed to be little shits.
But then, miracles weren’t supposed to break their girlfriends hearts and egos by freaking out every time they snogged. Poor Alex; he felt so guilty about that; she really was one of the nicest people he knew and she didn’t deserve any of it. She avoided his gaze whenever they crossed paths in the hall, and she’d started calling herself Alexandria instead. Some of the rumours her friends had started had backfired on her as well, people saying that he’d only dated her because she had short hair and a flat chest and a boy’s name.
He’d tried to apologise, but it was impossible to get her alone anymore. Maybe he should think about sending her an email, but that was so impersonal.
He was an odd little miracle. But Nonnie did say that sometimes gifts could do more harm than good and you had to be very careful, although at the time she’d been talking about his foster sister’s singing voice, which was outrageously loud (the girl was ten, and didn’t understand Nonnie’s passive-aggression-disguised-as-wisdom like Cai did, and kept singing at top volume). His gift, though… damn it was awkward sometimes.
It started happening after the school shooting. The day he was allowed to go home was the first time Dominic let himself believe his boy wasn’t going to die, and he grasped his face and pressed his forehead against Cai’s and looked him long in the eyes.
Cai’s eyes had closed and in the dark he saw what Dom had gone through in the days Cai was in hospital. He saw him at home, pacing. He same him taking an axe to the firewood supply till his arms shook and he sunk to the ground by the stump, and cried in such a raw and animal way. In a way Dom would never, ever want Cai to see.
Cai pulled back from the embrace, horrified, and passed out. They made him stay another night in hospital.
After that – it was intimacy that triggered it. He’d get close to someone, he’d be touching them, forming some kind of connection and his eyes would close and he’d be pulled into some part of their mind. Sometimes it was their past, but sometimes he saw the future.
There’s no hope for a relationship when every time you snog someone you are exposed, without their consent, to parts of them so private you have no right. He’d seen things of Alex’s he should not have seen. He’d seen her fighting with her older sister and crying afterward, hiding in her room. He saw her stealing food from the cupboard and blaming it on her youngest brother who was only six and had a speech impediment. He saw her standing naked in front of her mirror, sucking in bits of herself, pinching others, trying out different poses and angles but eventually giving up in disgust and throwing herself down on her bed in misery.
Every time he hoped it wouldn’t happen – because he really, really wanted to kiss her – and sometimes little kisses were okay if he forced himself to think about absolutely anything else, anything other than her, but when he did that she always knew.
And when he let himself enjoy making out with her, the visions about her would come and he’d have to pull back, sometimes forcefully. And he’d always feel horrible afterwards, various degrees of disorientated, dizzy or nauseated. Sometimes he passed out.
Of course she felt unwanted. And he should have broken up with her sooner, but she was just so lovely. They’d only started getting more serious since New Year’s Eve, anyway, though they’d been dating since Imogene-Hope’s Halloween party.
He never saw his own past or future, only that of the person he was with. But Cai didn’t need to see his future to know he was probably going to die a virgin.
A miraculous virgin, like the Virgin Mary, maybe, but at least she got to have sex after she'd had Jesus.
A couple of months ago, when he’d started to agonise over the decision about whether he should break up with Alex or not, he’d asked Nonnie if she believed in real miracles. And if she thought ordinary people could perform them.
She’d looked at him suspiciously for a long time. “Miracles,” she said, with a twinkle in her eye. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
Cai called his grandfather lots of different things, depending on what others words were passing between them at the time, but he only ever called Nonnie Nonnie.
Nonnie’s favourite saying was ‘I wouldn’t know anything about that.’ This frustrated Cai when he was younger and he was asking important questions like why water got bubbly when it was hot and how did a piano work. But as he got older, he started to work out that her favourite saying was a test. A test of how he’d react when the clear cut answers weren’t handed to him on a silver platter. As he got older (and after Dom had pointed it out once on his twelfth birthday) he started to notice the look in her eye whenever she said I wouldn’t know anything about that. A twinkle in her eyes that said yes, boy, I know everything there is to know about that.
And recognising that twinkle was the first step to discovering what Nonnie did know. He just had to work for it.
She told him ‘I could tell you everything I know, of course, but truth will never feel like truth until you’ve learned it for yourself. A mother can explain why fire is hot to her child but the child can’t understand that till he gets too close to the flame himself’ when she pushed the phone book toward him and told him that if he could use this old tool to find out where his father lived she would let him go and visit. The rest of the discovery was all up to Cai.
He'd met his father before, of course, but he'd lost all contact with him while his mother was getting sicker and sicker. Cai hadn't wanted to speak to him at all and Ross seemed okay with this arrangement and hadn't pushed it. But Cai was twelve, now, and thought he should try to know his father.
He rode his bike over to Ross’s house to meet him one morning in January, a couple of days after his birthday. He hadn’t seen his father since his mother’s funeral, two years ago.
He hoped for a lot of things that day, but didn’t find any of them. His father had another family, a third family, and he was the awkward, out of place, brown bastard son.
Cai biked home in the winter air, trying valiantly not to cry on Nonnie as she opened the door to him and wrapped him up in her arms. She hadn’t told him he was going to be disappointed, she hadn’t promised him anything except that she and Dom would always be here when he was ready to come home. Cai did cry, but he fought every one of his sobs, trying to contain each one till his face was red with it. He was twelve for gods sake! He was almost a man. When they were twelve, Percy Jackson started his quests, James Adams was recruited by Cherub, Harry Potter had defeated Voldemort twice already and Toph was one of the best earthbenders ever. Cai reminded himself of all their achievements, told himself it was stupid to be sad about a man you didn’t even know really, and stopped crying.
By the time next January rolled around and his thirteenth birthday was approaching, Cai hadn’t done anything spectacular. He wasn’t in the position to be defeating dark wizards, he hadn’t been approached by any secret spy agencies, and the closest he got to earthbending was throwing clods of dirt at his friends at London College.
But then a girl called Gloria Giersbergan bought a gun to school and shot him in the back. He died briefly during surgery when the surgeon was attempting to get the bullet out of him. They revived him, and decided not to attempt to remove the bullet after all.
Now, he carried it round inside of him like a token. He thought about it a lot, how alive his body was as this incredibly structure built around this instrument of death. How his heart beat on when it had come so close to stopping for good.
He thought about it a lot when he fought with his grandfather. Since he started Year Twelve he’d been butting heads with Dominic more and more often, although they were both careful not to start when any of the foster kids were staying over, both aware of what kind of homes they’d come from.
Cai's issues with Dom stemmed from the fact that Cai wanted to leave school at the end of this year and become a builder, or a furniture maker, or something where he could do something practical for the world. He loved the idea of building houses that people would live their lives in. He loved the idea of building churches, or carving pews that people would find comfort and faith in.
But Dominic wanted him to stay in school all the way to the end, even though Cai had no intention of going to university afterwards. He’d do an apprenticeship somewhere; he didn’t need a university degree to prove to the world he was useful. And he didn’t want to start his adult life by getting into thousands and thousands of pounds worth of debt.
After he’d stormed off to his room he would put his hand over the bullet and tell himself God saved my heart for something bigger than this. He’d tell himself he had purpose, he had reason, and that reason was not to make the world a nastier place by fighting with Dom. Miracles weren’t supposed to be little shits.
But then, miracles weren’t supposed to break their girlfriends hearts and egos by freaking out every time they snogged. Poor Alex; he felt so guilty about that; she really was one of the nicest people he knew and she didn’t deserve any of it. She avoided his gaze whenever they crossed paths in the hall, and she’d started calling herself Alexandria instead. Some of the rumours her friends had started had backfired on her as well, people saying that he’d only dated her because she had short hair and a flat chest and a boy’s name.
He’d tried to apologise, but it was impossible to get her alone anymore. Maybe he should think about sending her an email, but that was so impersonal.
He was an odd little miracle. But Nonnie did say that sometimes gifts could do more harm than good and you had to be very careful, although at the time she’d been talking about his foster sister’s singing voice, which was outrageously loud (the girl was ten, and didn’t understand Nonnie’s passive-aggression-disguised-as-wisdom like Cai did, and kept singing at top volume). His gift, though… damn it was awkward sometimes.
It started happening after the school shooting. The day he was allowed to go home was the first time Dominic let himself believe his boy wasn’t going to die, and he grasped his face and pressed his forehead against Cai’s and looked him long in the eyes.
Cai’s eyes had closed and in the dark he saw what Dom had gone through in the days Cai was in hospital. He saw him at home, pacing. He same him taking an axe to the firewood supply till his arms shook and he sunk to the ground by the stump, and cried in such a raw and animal way. In a way Dom would never, ever want Cai to see.
Cai pulled back from the embrace, horrified, and passed out. They made him stay another night in hospital.
After that – it was intimacy that triggered it. He’d get close to someone, he’d be touching them, forming some kind of connection and his eyes would close and he’d be pulled into some part of their mind. Sometimes it was their past, but sometimes he saw the future.
There’s no hope for a relationship when every time you snog someone you are exposed, without their consent, to parts of them so private you have no right. He’d seen things of Alex’s he should not have seen. He’d seen her fighting with her older sister and crying afterward, hiding in her room. He saw her stealing food from the cupboard and blaming it on her youngest brother who was only six and had a speech impediment. He saw her standing naked in front of her mirror, sucking in bits of herself, pinching others, trying out different poses and angles but eventually giving up in disgust and throwing herself down on her bed in misery.
Every time he hoped it wouldn’t happen – because he really, really wanted to kiss her – and sometimes little kisses were okay if he forced himself to think about absolutely anything else, anything other than her, but when he did that she always knew.
And when he let himself enjoy making out with her, the visions about her would come and he’d have to pull back, sometimes forcefully. And he’d always feel horrible afterwards, various degrees of disorientated, dizzy or nauseated. Sometimes he passed out.
Of course she felt unwanted. And he should have broken up with her sooner, but she was just so lovely. They’d only started getting more serious since New Year’s Eve, anyway, though they’d been dating since Imogene-Hope’s Halloween party.
He never saw his own past or future, only that of the person he was with. But Cai didn’t need to see his future to know he was probably going to die a virgin.
A miraculous virgin, like the Virgin Mary, maybe, but at least she got to have sex after she'd had Jesus.
A couple of months ago, when he’d started to agonise over the decision about whether he should break up with Alex or not, he’d asked Nonnie if she believed in real miracles. And if she thought ordinary people could perform them.
She’d looked at him suspiciously for a long time. “Miracles,” she said, with a twinkle in her eye. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
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