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I must let out a sound or lurch forward. I don’t know which. I only know that when he sees me at the very margin of this circle, sunlight strikes his face, and there’s no hiding his smile.
Or that he means this.
“Because the wordsI love youfrom an addict ain’t worth shit. There’s no future in it.”
He adds this so, so softly.
“These days, I’m pretty sure I’d know the real deal if I heard it.”
He addresses the students next, and this comes out with a harder edge. “But a little kid can’t know the difference between real care and what an addict promises, can they? Real care would have meant seeing where I struggled at school, and helping. Would have meant fighting for me, for real, instead of lying when social workers came knocking. That was the drugs talking, but when kids get lied to enough times, they’ll believe they get exactly what they’re worth. Believe they did something bad todeserve where they end up. Assume maybe they’re the reason for the habit. What’s that called?”
Noah spits, “Shame and self-blame.”
“And what do those do?”
“Stop you from talking when really you should.” Noah’s hair flames. So does his face. “I could have told Marc what was happening at home.”
“Shame and self-blame,” Rae repeats. “But you didn’t because…”
“I didn’t want to get Mum and Dad into trouble.”
Rae almost sighs this. “Me neither, mate. Me neither.” He draws in a deep breath. “And I would have kept blaming myself and maybe ended up here—” He strides over to Teo’s journey, that stick stabbing at an image I can’t see.
Teo joins those dots for me. “Locked up, like I would have been if Mr. Lawson hadn’t promised I had a place here, even after I kept running away.”
Teo is a big lad with a deep voice. It’s easy to think he’s a man already.
He’s never sounded younger.
“That’s why I’ve drawn him with a cape here.”
Rae swishes an invisible cape of his own, his eyes meeting with mine and laughing while an old shame chokes me. “Nothing wrong with needing a hero,” he says, still smiling at me. “Or a giant. It will only make it easier for you to be one. You picked a great role model.” He heads back to his own roll of paper. “If I hadn’t had a hero or role model of my own to lean on, I could have ended up in prison, or I could have ended up sinking as low as Mum did as an addict.”
And there’s a punch straight to the centre of my chest.
I’m winded as he continues with what sounds like a description of a nightmare.
“With weed at first. Then with a little bit of brown when weed wouldn’t take the edge off, and so what if heroin cost more and meant selling whatever wasn’t nailed down? There was always ket, and if it left her too zoned out to be a parent, a few bumps of speed would always…”
He stops there, his head hanging before he meets my eyes again. This time it’s only fleeting. He might as well have held up a mirror to a confession I once made to Kirsty about a failed test that meant I’d fucked the future for her and the girls. He sounds just as shame-filled. “A bump of coke or speed would get her motor running. Why wouldn’t she send her son out to score it for her?”
A penny drops then for me.
He isn’t ashamed of himself. He’s ashamed of her.
Forher.
My soul shrivels.
Rae says, “If I hadn’t drawn a picture of those white lines, and if a teacher hadn’t noticed, I could have ended up?—”
Noah speaks up. “Having to mule?” He translates for the others. “Run drug deliveries. Little kids do that all the time where I’m from.” He rubs his chest like it hurts, only his gaze is fixed on what he’s drawn during these sessions with Rae. I can’t see, but I guess it must be a knife when his voice sharpens. “Or they get made into a lesson.”
Rae nods. “No good choices when it comes to rival gangs, right?”
“My brother got me out,” Noah says. “That’s why I drew Marc on my journey.”
“Another hero.” Rae clasps Noah’s shoulder before turning back to the end of his roll of paper. He says, “Remember I told you where I found my first one after addiction wrecked my family?” This smile is so, so sweet. “And things got better for me.”
