Stanley

‘Come on, son, time for school.’

‘I don’t want to go.’

Friday morning, and Stanley was sitting on the edge of his bed, staring down at his new school shoes. He’d grown out of the old ones, and last night it had taken him ages to thread his laces. He wanted them to go straight across – that was very important – and also quite hard, as the laces had to end up equal lengths and they never did. It meant doing it lots of times until you got it right.

Tricky, that’s what his mum had called it. Stanley liked that word. Much better than the words his dad used. His dad got impatient and swore a lot, and said what was wrong with laces being criss-crossed? Laces were always criss-crossed.

But Stanley knew that wasn’t true, as he’d seen them laced in a shop when his mum had taken him to buy the last pair. The laces definitely went straight across. He remembered the sales assistant threading them through. It had been fascinating. He’d watched her carefully, committing it to memory. Which was lucky, as this time he didn’t go into a shop. Instead they ordered his shoes from a website on the computer and, when they arrived, all black and shiny in the box, they weren’t laced up and there wasn’t a nice assistant called Fatima to do it for him.

So he did it himself. After his dad sent him to bed with the criss-crossed laces, he’d got out his torch. Patiently doing it again and again until he got it right. Because it was very important that he made the new pair like the old pair. They had to be the same. Everything had to be the same.

Even when it wasn’t.

‘I’ve got to work, even if I don’t want to go,’ his dad was saying now.

Stanley raised his eyes from his shoes. Above him, his dad was peering down at him, frowning. He had that deep line that went between his eyebrows, which he always had these days. Once when his dad had fallen asleep on the sofa watching telly, Stanley had run his finger across it and was surprised to realize it was a proper groove. Since then he often rubbed the bit between his own eyebrows with his thumb and wondered when he’d get one.

‘Why don’t you want to go to work?’ asked Stanley, frowning and trying to copy his dad.

‘Because sometimes I don’t want to face the world.’

And now his dad was bobbing down next to him, and brushing the hair out of his face. His hands were rough, like sandpaper, but Stanley didn’t say anything. He didn’t like people touching him, but with his dad it was different.

‘Look, Stan, it’s going to get easier, I promise.’

Stanley chewed the inside of his lip and looked down again at his laces. They really were very straight. He’d even used a ruler.

‘Can I come to work with you instead?’