Becoming P.T. Lyfantod - 7
A serial fantasy novel
What follows is Part 7 of Becoming P.T. Lyfantod
If you missed Part 1, start there:
My mam came back around noon, as she’d said. I wasn’t exactly happy to see her, but I suppose I’d gotten used to the idea. Climbing into the passenger seat of her little grey two-door, a powerful sense of inevitability settled over me. The day would go on regardless of my thoughts on the matter, and I might as well accept it.
Mam was chatty. She asked lots of questions and genuinely seemed interested in what I had to say. I wanted to be annoyed, but I found it hard in the face of her positivity. She asked about school, and band, and whether or not I had a girlfriend. I told her I didn’t. She asked what sort of music I was into. I told her I guessed I was into the same music as everybody else.
When she asked about movies, I told her we’d gone to see Independence Day at UCI cinemas. She’d never heard of it, so I explained the plot as we drove—about giant alien spaceships appearing in the skies over major cities and how the Americans have to stop them before they all attack. I told her how we’d talked about it at school, because the president had stolen lines from a Dylan Thomas poem in his speech.
The drive into downtown Swansea was a straight shot and only about three miles from my house in Sketty. It felt farther on my bike. Our first stop was Deep Pan Pizza, in Parc Tawe, not far from the cinema, in fact. I did my best not to let on how pleased I was when I realized where we were going. Being fifteen, pizza was one of my favorite foods, but mam-gu didn’t have the money for eating out more than once in a blue moon. Deep Pan was usually reserved for special occasions.
We got a pepperoni pizza.
“She’s only doing it to butter you up.” Rudy sat next to Coira now. Both of them faced me with their arms around their knees.
“He’s right,” she nodded. “She’s up to something.”
“You should eat the pizza and then tell her to piss off. She’s not fooling anybody.”
“Well, I would like to have done that, but…you do remember this all happened in 1996?”
Coira’s eyebrows climbed toward the slowly-drying mop on her head. “Hell’s bells, you’re old!”
“Thanks for that.”
“Either way, I don’t trust her,” Rudy said. “She sounds exactly like my mum.”
I frowned at that. It’d been Rudy’s mother who’d hired me to find him, and she’d struck me as deeply caring and concerned. Was the Celia Vane I’d met the real woman, I wondered, or just a sympathetic façade? It couldn’t be easy, parenting a Late Bloomer, especially one as willful as the boy before me; but then, what sort of parent’s child would become a Bloomer in the first place? I voiced none of these thoughts, of course. “You’re an excellent judge of character,” I said instead. “And I’m sorry.”
The pizza was delicious. I devoured two slices in less than five minutes. My mother ate more slowly, as though she wasn’t worried the pizza might up and vanish at any moment. I noticed her watching me eat. It was more attention than I was entirely comfortable with. I focused on the food and tried to ignore it.
It was obvious, after a while, that she had something on her mind. She was working up the nerve to say something, and I was trying to guess what it was. But she didn’t get the chance, because as I was reaching for my fourth slice, my eye happened upon one of the other patrons. I froze. “Him!”
“Hmm? What now?” Mam craned her neck over her shoulder to follow my gaze.
I was so surprised—and full of cheese—that I forgot not to trust my mother with sensitive information. So I told her, “That old man. In the green. I’ve seen him before.”
My mam squinted at him briefly. “So?”
“A lot,” I clarified.
She pursed her lips. “I’m not sure I see the problem.”
“Like, all the time! And he’s always wearing green.”
“Is there something wrong with green? Is this something new with the kids I don’t know about?”
“There’s something wrong with wearing that much. He’s weird, and it’s got nothing to do with the kids. I think he’s following me.”
The man was tall, slender, white-haired, and seated by himself. He wore an immaculate three-piece suit of a vibrant, emerald green, with gold accents. I knew he was tall even though he was sitting because I had seen him before. Countless times. He always appeared at the strangest moments, in the unlikeliest places. Like the supermarket. Or the bank. Mam-gu and I didn’t go out that often, but when we did, he was there a disproportionate amount—always impeccably dressed, always in green. And whenever I tried to point him out, he was gone by the time mam-gu got around to looking. She thought I was slightly mental.
“You do see him, right?”
Mam looked concerned. “Of course I see him. Sitting there, dressed like he’s ready for the Saint Patrick’s Day parade—”
He glanced up in her direction, and she spun toward me, mortified. He only looked a moment before lowering his eyes and returning to his salad. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” she hissed. “Why on Earth d’you think he’s following you?”
“Because. He’s weird. Look. He’s eating salad by himself at a pizza parlor. Who does that?”
“You’re overreacting.”
“You’re under-reacting!”
“He probably lives nearby. Swansea isn’t that large. For all you know, he’s your neighbor.”
“He’s not my neighbor.”
“Oh? And how do you know?”
“Cause I’d have seen him!”
“But P.T., you have seen him. You aren’t making any sense.”
“Fine. Don’t believe me. But when I vanish into the boot of a strange man’s car, remember this moment. Let’s go. I’m full anyway.”
Mam sighed but didn’t argue. She got a to-go box for the rest of the pizza and said I could take it home. I watched the man in green out of the corner of my eye while she paid, waiting for him to do something suspicious or…odd. He never did. Other than continuing to eat that salad. Green and leafy it was, and a far cry from pepperoni. Then we were outside, and I had to wrest my mind back to more immediate concerns—like discovering what mam was up to.
We went next to the Carousel Amusement Centre. I can’t deny that I enjoyed myself, hopping from one game to the next with an endless supply of coins flowing from mam’s purse. I raced, I fought, I slayed monsters, and all the while mam stood off to one side, cheering me on. I was in a pretty fine mood by the time we ambled out of the old red brick building and into the afternoon.
We strolled in companionable silence along the Kingsway towards High Street with no particular destination in mind. I was pondering the possibility of ice cream, wondering whether this might become a regular thing, when mam cleared her throat and remarked what a nice day it was. There was something in her tone that made me stop and take notice. Something was coming.
“I knew it! I knew she was after something. What is it?” Rudy slapped the clammy stone floor.
“Let him finish!” Coira punched him in the arm.
“I am! Shh!”
