A story for Young Adults and those of us who perhaps have never grown up…
I was, I’ll admit, running a bit behind schedule on my way to your class. The reason is ‘Looking for Alibrandi,’ which I needed for my English class that comes after biology. I would have been on time if I hadn’t been looking for Alibrandi. Someone had hidden it on me. That’s the honest truth, Ms. Teichmann, and I had to find it. They’d dumped it in the bin at the back of E 10, by the way.
Dear Ms. Teichmann
I don’t want to seem impertinent or anything like that but I wish you had given me a chance to explain why I was late to class. You know: a “Come outside and tell me…” chance, instead you just held up a hand like a traffic cop and went ‘Uh-uh’ every time I tried to speak. ‘You can explain in a thousand-word response. On my desk before school tomorrow,’ you said. I am getting to that explanation, Ms. Teichmann, but I know you are a fair-minded person (I know I’ve been a minute or two late before, so you probably had good reason to suspect that I was going to attempt some wild story) and so I simply wanted to register that early protest. I could have saved myself an extra two hours or so after prep and saved you the trouble of reading this if you’d let me explain at the time. Anyway, here is the explanation, Ms. Teichmann and I just know you’re going to want to speak to me about it, anyway.
I was, I’ll admit, running a bit behind schedule on my way to your class. The reason is ‘Looking for Alibrandi,’ which I needed for my English class that comes after biology. I would have been on time if I hadn’t been looking for Alibrandi. Someone had hidden it on me. That’s the honest truth, Ms. Teichmann, and I had to find it. They’d dumped it in the bin at the back of E 10, by the way. When I reached in I caught the scar I’ve got on my right wrist on the edge of the bin and opened up a cut so I had to go and wash that. I mean, I wasn’t bleeding to death or anything but I didn’t want blood on my books. So into the loo I went. But at the most I would have been maybe 3 minutes late.
I was running, which I know is a demerit crime, but I didn’t want to be late, honest. I looked down at my watch and whammo; I crashed into this year niner coming down the hall from J Block. This is where it gets really crazy, Ms. Teichmann, and I know you’ll find this hard to believe but something about that kid spooked me from the moment he and I both said sorry at exactly the same moment. I’d never seen him before, not that I knew of, and I felt like he was someone I’d known all my life. ‘I was running late…’ we both said simultaneously. I felt my tongue choke my mouth ‘cause I hate people thinking I’m saying the obvious thing and the year niner laughed. God, that laugh, I knew that laugh. I was looking into his eyes and I was looking at a ghost, Ms. Teichmann. Honest, I knew I was looking at my younger brother. I shook my head. I thought I was going crazy.
I know you will have looked at all your students’ records, Ms. Teichmann, and you’ll know I had a younger brother who was killed in a car crash three years ago. I know that those records probably tell you to watch me carefully because I went a little crazy after that, too. Honestly though, that laugh was my brother’s. The crazy thing is that he would have been in year nine now, too.
And this year niner was looking at me as if he knew me. He knew that this was X files stuff too. So we had to talk, we had to suddenly spit it out.
I told him about Benjamin. He’d been in the back of my Aunt’s car going up Punt Road and a BMW had run the light. ‘Was it red?’ the year niner asked me, and I was blown out. Not only ‘cause it was a red BMW but also because Ben had always made a joke about red Bee Ems. Anyway, they rushed Benjamin to the nearest hospital. He was coughing up great globules of blood. His insides had been ruptured but his head, his beautiful head; that was uninjured. That’s a very important thing to remember. (I’m typing this as fast as I can Ms. Teichmann because the complete amazement of it just spins me out still, so I might get a bit flowery.) The date was July 14. That’s Bastille Day. Benjamin died that night at 10:14 of massive internal haemorrhaging. I remember the way he used to laugh at lunatics in red BMWs. That’s irony.
Now it goes completely off the planet. Danny, that was the year niner’s name, told me he didn’t remember anything before three years ago. He’d been in the hospital that same time. The very same date. He was dying and then, whammo, they whisked him into an operating theatre and suddenly he was on the road to recovery. The only thing was, they told him he’d have almost complete amnesia regarding his lifetime before the operation.
Danny had strange dreams. He wandered around in rooms that weren’t in his parents’ house. He never recognized old toys and hated most of the games he’d used to like before he’d gotten sick. He said, and this will spook you, he said he never ever recognized the scent of his mother when she hugged him. He said he used to cry about it sometimes at night.
You can see that this was a very intense conversation Ms. Teichmann. I mean, say this sort of thing to guys and most times you’d have a fist in your face. But I honestly felt like I was talking to someone completely familiar and so did he. Out of the blue I asked him some stupid questions.
‘What’s your favourite colour?’
‘Black,’ he said. That was Benjamin’s.
‘Ever fall out of a tree?’
‘Yep,’ he said. ‘When I was four.’ Then he swore, Ms. Teichmann, because he was completely amazed. ‘Hell,’ he said, ‘I just remembered that.’ You guessed it, Ms. Teichmann, Benjamin had fallen out of the apple tree in our back yard when he was four.
He saw the scar on my wrist. ‘I remember how you got that sliding down that pile of rubbish at the tip and there was glass at the bottom,’ he said.
He was exactly right.
I won’t give you any more of the dialogue. I just wanted to establish what a crazy, fabulous thing this was. I mean, I knew I was talking to my long dead brother and so did Danny. And we worked out how too.
You’re a biologist, Ms. Teichmann. Physically I’m sure it’s possible to exchange a brain. They exchange hearts and kidneys and so on, so why not the human brain. Everything inside Benjamin’s body was trashed by the impact with that car but his head, apart from a bruise or two, was fine. Remember. So was his brain. Danny’s brain was on the way out because of some disorder. He had a tumour, or something like that. The point was, well, I bet there was some brilliant surgeon in there with a theory that it could be done.
So they did it. They had to lie to Danny’s parents and they had to lie to mine in order to do it and no doubt they probably lied to lots of other people too but I reckon that in that year nine boy named Danny you are looking at your very first brain transplant.
That’s why I was nearly twenty minutes late to class, Ms. Teichmann. Honestly.
(1271 words. Sorry, I’ve gone over the limit.)
Inkstained fingers 