The Map of Us. Jules Preston

a piece of paper with a purple felt tip pen. It looked great, too. So I outlined it in yellow pen. Then I drew little green stars around the outline. Then I drew larger red stars around the green stars. Then I filled the space between the inner green stars and the outer red stars with small orange hearts. Then I drew a rainbow in the background with all the wrong colours and realised I had probably gone too far. It was a mess. My brother was good with pens. I wasn’t. Maybe I was being overly critical? I reminded myself that if Jack had drawn the same thing it would all be blue, including the rainbow, which would rather defeat the object.

      I got out another piece of paper and wrote ‘The Compatibility Index’ again, this time in ordinary pen. It looked sad, like a room after you take down all the party decorations. It could not be helped. I punched some holes in the sheet of paper and clipped it inside the vast empty folder. That was even worse. Now it looked sad and lonely, like a room full of decorations when no one shows up to the party. I knew that feeling. I’ve had birthdays like that. Let’s not go there.

      I stuck the messy rainbow picture on the wall by my desk. The tape would probably tear the wallpaper off when I tried to take it down, but it didn’t matter. It was my flat, and I didn’t like it all that much anyway.

      I liked the little orange hearts best. I went to get some chocolate. I was having fun already. Yeah. How hard could it be?

       tortoise

      I haven’t always been good with numbers. For a long time, I had a disagreement with the numbers 3 and 5. They looked exactly the same to me. It sounds stupid. But however hard I looked I could not tell the difference between them. I tried. I practiced writing them down and always got them wrong. Reversed. Mirrored. Substituted one for the other. I wrote whole pages of perfectly formed numbers only to discover they were not the numbers I thought they were. My brother used to laugh at me. He was older. It was his job to laugh and point and call me names and make me the object of his ridicule. Jack wasn’t good at numbers either. His disagreement ran much deeper. He had a problem with all of them. They were a foreign language to him.

      Jack liked coloured pencils. I liked coloured pencils too, but I couldn’t get them to do the things he could. He made coloured pencils sing. I made them squawk. He could do the same with felt pens and crayons and chalk and poster paint. He was rarely without colour. On his hands or face. Under his fingernails. On his clean shirt. If he could not find paper or a wall to draw on, he drew on his trousers. Every six months my parents had to buy a new washing machine. And more trousers. I liked trousers, too.

      Katherine was not like us. Not ever. She liked dresses. With flowers. She brushed her hair and wore socks.

      I failed exam after exam. Dates of important events muddled. Sums confused and incomplete. The world conspired against me. Everything had a 3 or a 5 in it. Or both.

      Then one day it stopped. Just like that. 3 and 5 were suddenly not the same any more. They were different. Individual. Unique looking. I don’t know how it happened. I was eleven. Nearly. I remember. It was the same day that Mr Everson from across the road backed his caravan over our tortoise. He said it was an accident. I don’t know if the two things are linked somehow. I doubt there is a correlation. Nothing that I can prove now anyway.

       view

      Helen had been in my office again. I could tell. I don’t leave traps or anything. That would be childish. I used to though. I could tell because there was a card waiting for me on my desk. It had ‘I Am Sorry’ written on it in silver glitter with a picture of a sad hamster holding a wilting daisy. It wasn’t signed. I knew it was from Helen. She left the price on the back.

      Helen and I have a love hate relationship that is heavily skewed towards the loathe and detest end of the spectrum. Apparently I have a better office than her. It has a window that overlooks the canal. The canal is a toxic slick of greeny-brown water full of traffic cones and paper coffee cups, topped with a thick layer of oily scum. Occasionally a rat will float by. On its back. Legs in the air. Usually with another rat trying to eat it. Or mate with it. It’s hard to tell. Helen’s window looks out over the allocated parking in front of the building and the main road. Somehow my view is superior.

      Helen likes to ‘borrow’ my things and leave them on her desk in plain sight - daring me to come and reclaim them. Proving ownership of a stapler can be a difficult and time-consuming process. Now she has begun to write her name on the bottom of things that don’t belong to her.

      So have I. She uses a marker pen. I have a UV security pen that can’t be seen under normal light. I may have written something rude about her on the bottom of my desk organiser. I know it will be her next target. She can’t lift my filing cabinet.

       64.726%

      Helen has been where I am now. Twice. I would have expected her to be more understanding. She still has both of her wedding rings. And a tattoo. I haven’t seen it. I’ve heard about it though. Apparently it says something about undying love with a heart in the background and some poorly drawn butterflies. Romantic. Only one problem. To my knowledge, she was never married to anyone called Derek.

      Her first marriage lasted an impressive nine days. The argument started at the reception. It escalated during the taxi ride to the airport. They were asked to leave the Executive Departure Lounge when other passengers complained about the shouting. Free champagne on the flight calmed things down, but it was only a temporary reprieve. It all kicked off again when they reached the hotel. They didn’t even make it to the end of their honeymoon. Her husband flew home early with a budget airline and got diverted to Stockholm. Helen decided to stay behind. The resort was all-inclusive, with three vast swimming pools and an attractive bar manager with taut abdominal muscles.

      Helen’s second marriage lasted a little longer. I am not sure how. The pair lived entirely separate lives from around the third month. He came to one office party, but we weren’t sure who he was, so no one talked to him, least of all his wife.

      By the time she was twenty-eight, Helen had been a Mrs Drake and a Mrs Cortes. Now she is using her maiden name again. Miss Cook. The sign on her door just says ‘Helen.’ It was easier for everyone to remember.

      In case you were wondering, the average marriage lasts around 8 years. Not an exact figure. 64.726% was therefore an approximation based on limited data. Here is how I worked it out:

      (y1 - x1) + (y2 - x2) = z

      (z x 8 x 365)/100 = 64.726%

      But that isn’t why it’s funny. It’s a statistics joke. It’s funny because it’s accurate to three decimal places. See?

      I don’t know why I bother.

       same

      Daniel Bearing had seven identical suits. They were grey. And seven identical ties. They were black. And seven identical shirts. They were white. They hung in a row in a purpose built, humidity-controlled wardrobe on identical hand crafted wooden coat hangers. They were Italian walnut. He had seven identical pairs of shoes. They were handmade black wingtip Oxfords.

      Daniel had a nice car and a nice apartment in a nice area and nice neighbours and absolutely no social life because he was never at home.

      Daniel worked for twelve hours a day, six days a week and only took a holiday when he was told to. He lived alone. He was too busy to live with anyone else. They would never see him. They would never notice he had been and gone because all his clothes were identical.

      Daniel’s life was a carbon copy of his father’s. His father