FELIX IN THE HOT SEAT         

  It’s that time in the early evening when it isn’t light any longer, but it isn’t quite dark yet. It’s winter. Lights are just going on in people’s homes as the bus trundles along. Outside on the streets, kids are on their way home from friends’ houses, ladies are carrying shopping bags, pushing prams. Just about everybody’s heading home. Like Felix, sitting by himself on the bus. He’s got his iPod plugged in, he’s got his hair punked in spikes, he’s wearing that look that says So I’m sitting by myself, so what? You think I care? Well, guess again. Duh.

  He knows where all the others are sitting, though. If you blindfolded him right now, he could tell you where they all are, the cool kids, the popular ones. As for the ones who don’t count, who aren’t cool, who knows where they’re sitting? Not him. Felix is sprawled in his seat, iPod blasting away, face impassive. He’s not moving a muscle, he’s got a drop-dead expression on his face and if you didn’t know any better, you might swear he was brain dead. But there’s plenty going on in his mind now, oh yeah.

  The fact that he’s sitting by himself: he does care, actually. But what’s he going to do about it? He can’t slap the space next to him and say, ‘Hey dude, sit with me,’ can he? He’s still new here, he’s only been in this school for two months. Hasn’t managed to make one friend yet, either. His Mum keeps asking him Have you made any friends yet? Met anyone you want to invite over for tea, Felix? He wishes to God she’d stop. No I haven’t, he thinks, so give over.  If she’s that worried about him not making friends, she should have thought twice before she decided they had to up sticks and come here in the first place. If she’s so anxious for him to bring kids home for tea, they could have all stayed where they were in Cardiff. But he never says that, of course. Felix doesn’t talk much as a general rule, and certainly not to his Mum.

The bus door groans open in front of the Tech and Jade gets on with another half dozen kids. Jade’s got Down’s. Felix groans inwardly. All the seats in the front are full. Jade clings to the pole, and as her eyes scan the bus for empty seats, Felix sinks  even deeper into his own seat. His Mum knows her Mum, he’s met Jade before a couple of times too. She might try to sit next to him and that would be so deeply uncool, there is no way he is going to let that happen.

  Behind him he can hear Sam and Jason laughing. ‘Dude, your girlfriend just got on,’ says Jason to Sam. They’re both cool, Jason and Sam, really popular kids. Jason springs out of his seat, almost falling as the bus lurches around a corner. Kelli and Laura titter. Kelli’s got a crush on Jason, Felix’s seen them holding hands and snogging in the corridors.

  ‘Hey Jade!’ yells Jason. ‘Over here! There’s a seat here, next to Sam!’ A lot of the kids are tittering now, waiting to see what she’ll do. Jade’s eyes open wider and she looks toward the back of the bus. You can tell she wants to believe there’s a seat for her, that they really want her to sit there. But she’s got just enough sense to know they’re teasing; she shakes her head vaguely, her mouth half open, and she stays there, clinging to her pole. The bus lurches around another corner and she teeters to the side a few steps, almost losing her balance. Jason’s trying to squeeze between Gareth and Gavin and there isn’t enough space. They’re pushing him onto Robbie’s lap and Robbie’s not having it. ‘Girroff me!’ he yells, his voice cracking.

  ‘Come on Jade!’ Jason calls again, half wrestling with Robbie, trying to get him to move over. ‘You’re hurting Sam’s feelings. He’s dead keen on you. Come on!’ Kelli’s calling out to her now too, telling her to come sit next to Sam. Laura thinks it’s just about the funniest thing she’s ever seen. She’s laughing so hard she can hardly breathe.

  Jade’s looking back at them again, a little wistfully. She’s 18 but she looks their age. Every time he and his Mum run into her in town, every time they’ve met, Jade tells his Mum she’s got a boyfriend at the Tech, claims she sits with him at lunch every day. A couple of times she’s told them she’s going to get married soon. ‘Poor kid,’ his Mum always says. ‘She just wants to be like everybody else, that’s all.’ Felix slides so far down in his seat he’s practically sitting on his neck. So far Jade hasn’t spotted him. So far nobody’s pointed out that there’s an empty space next to him, either. So far so good.

  ‘Go up front and get her,’ Laura’s whispering to Kelli. ‘Go up there and bring her back here – get her to sit next to Sam!’  She and Kelli explode into giggles and Kelli gets up, clapping a hand over her mouth to stop herself from laughing, and goes to the front of the bus. ‘Come on, Jade,’ she says, oozing fake sincerity, all solicitous and kindly. ‘You shouldn’t hurt Sam’s feelings like this. Come on with me, I’ll walk with you.’

  Felix feels sorry for Jade, but if you’ve got Down’s and people bully you, it’s not as bad as getting bullied if you’re someone like him, say, someone without Down’s. It’s not like people with Down’s don’t have feelings, but they don’t really know what’s going on most of the time. Getting heckled on the bus like that – other kids making fun of you and acting like you’ve got cooties – that would be hell for someone like him, someone without Down’s. And even though he feels sorry for Jade, there is no way he is going to intervene.

  Kelli’s got Jade by the arm, they’re walking down the aisle, staggering a little from side to side as the bus blazes along past tired little farms and industrial estates. It’s darker now and you can see people framed in the lit windows of their houses. Cozy little front rooms with people reading, sitting and talking. Watching telly, eating dinner, enjoying each other’s company. Jade and Kelli stagger past Felix, who’s still sprawled in his seat, and just at that moment Jade looks down at him and they make eye contact.

  Felix sees his arm go up, sees his hand reach out to tug on her sleeve. ‘Hey Jade,’ his voice calls out, ‘wanna sit here?’ Jade’s been looking uneasy, a little shy, a little nervous, but suddenly her mouth curls into a smile. She can’t talk very well, Jade, but she tries. Oh yes, she wants to sit there next to him, she says. She turns to Kelli and Sam and apologizes very nicely. You can hardly tell what she’s saying, her words are all garbled, but you can guess. I can’t sit with you now, I’m sitting here instead. Next to Felix. My friend Felix.  Just in case they couldn’t understand her, she repeats that last bit a couple of times:  My friend Felix.

  Everyone is vastly amused. Okay, says Jason, they get it now: Jade is Felix’s girlfriend! They should have known that, they say. That’s why Felix was leaving that seat open: he was saving it for his girlfriend, Jade. Of course.  And what a cute couple they make! Jade and Felix, true love forever. Kelli and Laura fall on each other’s shoulders in a frenzy of giggling. Some of the other passengers turn around and look at them, they’re that hysterical.

  Felix feels sick. It’s like when you’ve just fallen down and banged up your knees. The pain is awful, but then you know you’ve got days of pain to come – weeks, even – until it scars up. Sometime it’ll stop hurting, but in the meantime there’s all that pain to go through. Never has Felix missed Cardiff and all his friends there so much in his life, and it’s not like he wasn’t missing them a lot already.

  Jade’s babbling away at him. Something about going to the library and looking at books about seashells. About having a tuna sandwich for her tea when she gets home. What is he going to have for tea? Does he know? He doesn’t? Oh. Well, she’s going to have tuna sandwiches. Does he like tuna sandwiches? No? She does, they’re her favourite food. She asks him about his Mum: is she alright? Is his little sister Liz alright, too? She tells him she’s alright and her Mum and Dad, they’re alright. And her twin brothers, they’re alright too, but one of them has a cold.

  It goes on and on and on:  man, Jade can talk. Felix does the best he can to listen. He nods, he says ‘Yeah?’ He does his best to filter out all the stupid things they’re all saying behind him, too – and all the laughter – but that’s even harder.

  A couple of days later, Felix is sitting in the cafeteria getting ready to eat his lunch. A girl walks up to him, one of the girls who also takes the bus, but one of the un-cool ones who doesn’t count. She sits near him in maths, but he can’t remember her name. Rachel maybe, R-something, anyway. She has long brown hair and thick eyebrows. Is he saving this seat? she wants to know. Felix shakes his head and she sits down. She opens her lunch and takes out a sandwich and an apple. ‘I’m Rebekah,’ she says, much to his relief. ‘Felix,’ he says, breathing in Rebekah’s apple-scented air.

  Rebekah unwraps her sandwich and sighs. ‘Egg salad,’ she says, ‘for the fourth time this week, too.’ She sighs again. Felix loves egg salad. He’s got turkey ham, his Mum’s been working through an economy pack of that all week long and he’s sick of it. Rebekah tells him that her mother favours vegetarian spreads like egg and marmite  but just once she’d like turkey or ham. They swap sandwiches.

  ‘That was really cool, what you did on the bus the other day,’ says Rebekah. ‘What?’ asks Felix. He has no idea what she’s talking about.

  ‘That girl? With Down’s?’ says Rebekah, by way of reminding him. ‘Oh,’ says Felix, the memory of that day flooding back, his face reddening. ‘Yeah, Jade.’

  Rebekah takes a bite of her sandwich. That used to be his. He takes a bite of the egg salad that used to be hers.

  ‘I was watching, you know,’ continues Rebekah, ‘and I kept telling myself that I ought to do something to stop those kids, that I ought to tell Kelli and Jason to grow up and cut it out – but I couldn’t make myself do it. Which is awful, I know. I’m always having these good impulses, but then I just never follow through on them. I never do the stuff I ought to do. I think about it, but I don’t have your kind of courage. Those kids – Laura and Kelli and Jason – they’re really hateful sometimes. I know they don’t really think they’re being evil or anything, they just – they just don’t            know. They don’t think about stuff – like how other people feel, or anything. They’re ignorant, I guess. They think doing stuff like that is funny. But the way you just reached out and said Wanna sit here? – it was way cool. We were talking about it afterwards and we all thought so.’

  Felix is stunned. Who’s we? he’s dying to ask, but he just nods. Felix, the cool guy. Felix, the guy with courage.

  On the way home from school, he sits with Rebekah and her friends Kate and Leslie. Kate says she visited Cardiff last year with her cousin and thought it was dead cool. Leslie and Rebekah want him to tell them all about it, so he does.