by Kevin Brooks
“All right?” I asked her.
She nodded hesitantly. “Yeah . . . I’m just a bit . . . I don’t know . . . this is the first time I’ve been out since it happened . . .”
“I know.”
She smiled at me, anxiety showing in her eyes. “Where are we going?”
I smiled back. “Follow me.”
I led her through the stairwell door and up the two flights of steps to the padlocked iron gate. I’d already been up earlier and unlocked it, so I just pushed it open, guided Lucy through to the steel-reinforced door, and locked the iron gate behind us. As I reached up to the keypad on the wall, tapped in the security code, and opened the door, Lucy gave me a puzzled look.
“Don’t ask,” I said to her. “This way.”
I ushered her into the little room, closing the reinforced door after us, and went over to the ladder on the wall. Again, I’d already been up and unlocked the hatchway, so all we had to do now was climb the ladder and we’d be out on the roof.
I looked at Lucy. “Still OK?”
“Yeah, I think so . . .”
“Are you all right with ladders?”
She looked up at the hatchway. “Does that go where I think it goes?”
“You’ll soon find out. Do you want me to go first?”
“OK.”
I climbed the ladder, pushed open the hatchway, and stepped out onto the roof, then I reached back down to help Lucy up.
“All right?” I said to her.
“Yeah . . .”
“I really like your hat, by the way.”
She grinned at me. “Do you always do this when you’re trying to impress a girl? Give her a ladder to climb, then compliment her on her choice of hat?”
“It usually works for me.”
As she reached the top of the ladder, I took her hand and helped her up through the hatchway onto the roof.
“Wow,” she said quietly, getting to her feet and looking around. “This is amazing. You can see forever . . . I mean, I know I’ve seen it all before, but . . .”
“It feels different up here, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah . . .” She looked at me. “You’re full of surprises, Tom Harvey.”
“I do my best,” I said.
She smiled at me.
“Are you hungry?” I asked.
“Why? Is there a restaurant up here or something?”
“It’s a picnic, remember? I invited you to a picnic.” I pointed toward the middle of the roof. “See?”
She gazed over at where I was pointing, and when she saw what was there, her eyes lit up and her face broke into the most wonderful shining smile. “Oh, Tom,” she cried. “That’s fantastic . . . it’s so beautiful.” She turned to me, still smiling like a child on Christmas morning. “Did you do all that for me?”
I looked over at the picnic table that I’d set up in the middle of the roof, and although it was a pretty ramshackle affair — an old foldout table and chairs I’d found in the spare room, a red and white tablecloth, a candle on a saucer, some paper cups and plates, sandwiches, chips, a big bottle of Coke, half a packet of chocolate cookies, and the remains of a fruitcake that Gram had made the week before — I had to admit that Lucy was right, it really did have a certain kind of raggedy beauty to it.
“Yeah,” I said, turning back to Lucy. “Yeah . . . I did it for you.” I could feel myself blushing slightly now, but I didn’t mind. “Do you really like it?”
She put her hand on my shoulder, leaned in toward me, and kissed me lightly on the cheek. “I adore it,” she said, looking into my eyes. “Really . . . I absolutely love it. Thanks, Tom.”
She kissed me again, another quick peck on the cheek, and then we just stood there for a while . . . just the two of us, high above the rest of the world, alone together in the dying light of a crimson sunset . . .
It was everything I’d ever wished for.
And in that moment, nothing else mattered.
It was just the two of us . . . just Lucy and me.
Just like it used to be.
Lucy smiled and said, “Shall we eat?”
I bowed my head. “If madam so wishes. Table for two, is it?”
“Please.”
“Follow me, m’lady.”
I led her over to the picnic table and held out the chair for her to sit down.
“Thank you, I’m sure,” she said.
“You’re very welcome.”
I sat down and reached for the bottle of Coke. “Coca-Cola?”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
I poured a small amount into a paper cup and offered it to her to taste. She took the cup, sniffed the Coke, rolled it around in the cup for a while, then took a tiny sip.
“Mmm . . .” she said, swallowing. “Delightful, thank you.”
She held out her cup and I filled it up. I poured myself a cup, then offered her the plate of sandwiches. “There’s cheese,” I explained. “Or . . . cheese spread. Or, if you’d prefer, there’s the sandwich of the day.”
Lucy grinned. “And what might that be?”
“Cheese.”
She laughed and took a couple of sandwiches. “Did you make these yourself?”
I nodded. “Cheese is my specialty. It was also the only thing left in the fridge.”
I opened a bag of chips for her.
“Cheese and onion?” she said.
“Yep.”
“Excellent.”
For the next few minutes, we just ate. It was really nice . . . just sitting there in the growing darkness, eating and drinking, not having to say anything, both of us unable to wipe the stupid smiles off our faces. The night was getting a little colder now, with a chilly breeze drifting across the roof, but we both had our coats on, and I don’t think either of us were really bothered.
After a while, Lucy took a rest from chewing and said to me, “So . . . what have you been doing recently? I haven’t seen you for a while.”
“Yeah, I know . . . I’m sorry, I kept meaning to come round, but stuff just kept getting in the way.”
“Stuff?”
I touched my head and shrugged, kind of ambiguously . . . which I knew was a pretty crappy thing to do. But I just didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t want to lie to her . . . and, in a way, it was the stuff in my head that had got in the way of me going round to see her.
“Right . . .” Lucy said, nodding uncertainly at me and slowly putting a chip in her mouth. “Right . . . I see.”
She chewed quietly on the chip for a while . . . which baffled me. I mean, how can anyone chew quietly on a chip? And then she looked at me and said softly, “It’s really quiet up here, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “The whole place seems pretty quiet at the moment.”
She nodded, and for a moment or two she was silent again, concentrating on getting the last few chip crumbs out of the bag. She licked her finger and ran it round the inside of the bag, sucked the bits off her finger, then upended the bag into her mouth.
“Finished?” I asked her, smiling.
She grinned. “I don’t like wasting any.”
I watched her as she twisted the empty chip bag into a bow and placed it under the Coke bottle to stop the breeze from blowing it away. She stared at the tabletop for a few seconds, thinking about something, then she looked up at me.
“Can you keep a secret?” she said.
“Yeah . . .”
“Well . . . you know all this stuff that’s been going on round the tower blocks, all the arrests and everything?”
“Yeah.”
“And you know there’s all kinds of rumors going round that there’s some kind of vigilante out there . . . some guy in a costume?”
“Yeah.”
She looked at me. “Well . . . I think it’s that kid I told you about, the one who calls himself iBoy. Remember?”
“The one who tried to throw Eugene O’Neil out the window?”
“Yeah . . .”
“The Fac
ebook guy?”
“Yeah. I think it’s him.”
“Who?”
“The vigilante,” she said impatiently. “The one who’s been doing all this stuff round the tower blocks. I think it’s iBoy.”
“Really?”
“Yeah . . . I mean, we talk to each other quite often on Facebook, and although he hasn’t actually admitted it’s him, he hasn’t denied it either.”
“So what are you trying to say? You think this iBoy kid is some kind of superhero or something?”
“No, of course not. But he definitely exists. I saw him, remember. I was there when he sorted out O’Neil and the others . . .” She shook her head in disbelief at the memory. “He zapped them, Tom. I mean he really zapped them. And he was wearing some kind of mask . . . honestly.”
“I believe you.” I cut a couple of slices of fruitcake, passed one to Lucy, and started eating the other one myself. “What do you think he is, then?”
“I don’t know —”
“And why do you think he’s doing it? I mean, do you think he’s doing it for you, like he’s some kind of guardian angel or something?”
She was about to bite into the fruitcake, but she paused in mid-chomp, lowering the cake and looking intensely at me. “What?”
“What?” I echoed. “What did I say?”
Her voice was quiet. “Why would you think he’d be doing anything for me?”
“Well . . . you know . . . I mean, he went after O’Neil and Firman and Craig, didn’t he?”
“So?”
I suddenly realized that I wasn’t supposed to know who’d raped Lucy, or who’d been there when it had happened. She hadn’t told me. I looked at her, trying to hide the hesitation in my mind. “I just meant, you know . . . he helped you when O’Neil and the others were outside your flat. iBoy, I mean. He was helping you, wasn’t he?”
“Yeah, but —”
“Well, that’s all I meant. He was helping you, and he got in touch with you on Facebook . . . so, you know . . . maybe it’s possible that he’s doing some of these things for you.”
Lucy’s eyes were fixed steadily on mine. “Right . . . but how would he know?”
“Know what?”
“How would he know who to go after? I mean, I know the only information I’m getting about any of this is what Ben tells me, but it seems like a lot of the people who were there when it happened . . . you know, when me and Ben were . . . when I was . . . well, you know what I mean.” She swallowed hard, trying not to cry. “A lot of those kids who were there . . . well, they’re the ones who’ve been getting beaten up or arrested or whatever.”
“So maybe this iBoy really is your guardian angel?” I suggested.
“Yeah, right,” said Lucy, biting into her fruitcake.
“Have you told anyone else about this?”
She shook her head, her mouth full of cake.
“What about the police?” I asked. “Have they been to see you?”
She nodded.
“What did you tell them?”
She swallowed. “Nothing.”
“Same here.”
She raised her eyebrows. “The police have been to see you?”
“Yeah . . .”
“Why?”
I touched the scar on my head. “I was there, wasn’t I? I mean, when they attacked you and Ben, I was there. Well, I was sort of there. The police wanted to know if I saw anything.”
“How could you have seen anything? You were thirty floors below.”
“I know . . . and I was lying on the ground with an iPhone stuck in my skull.”
She laughed, then almost immediately she said, “Sorry, I don’t know why I’m laughing. It’s not funny.” She looked at me. “So the police just came to see you about that? They didn’t ask you anything about the vigilante?”
“Yeah, they asked me about that, too.” I shrugged. “Apparently a bunch of FGH kids were attacked last week by our friendly neighborhood Mystery Kid, and someone saw me sitting around the kids’ playground a few minutes before it happened. So, you know, the cops just wanted to know if I saw anything.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“What were you doing at the playground?”
“Not much . . . just hanging around, you know.”
She smiled. “On your own?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you go on the swings?”
I shook my head. “They were all broken.”
Lucy grinned. “Yeah, I bet they were.”
“They were . . . what are you grinning about?”
“You were always scared of going on the swings.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“You were. When we were kids . . . you always had an excuse for not going on the swings — your gran wouldn’t let you, they didn’t look safe, you had a bad back —”
“Yeah, well, they weren’t safe, were they? Kids were always falling off and cracking their heads open.”
Lucy laughed. “I went on them.”
“Yeah, but you never went on the whizzy-round thing, did you?”
“The whizzy-round thing?”
“Yeah, you know — the wooden roundabout thing that whizzes round really fast?” I smiled at her. “You never went on that.”
Lucy shrugged. “It made me dizzy.”
“You were scared of it.”
“Yeah, but I was a little girl. Little girls are allowed to be scared.” She looked at me, her eyes sparkling. “What’s your excuse?”
I held my hands up. “All right, I admit it. I’m a wimp. Always have been, always will be.”
Lucy shook her head. “You’re being too hard on yourself, Tom. You’re not a wimp.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re more of a nerd than a wimp.”
I gave her a pained look. “Now you’re going too far. I mean, wimpiness I can accept. In fact, I kind of like being a wimp. But calling me a nerd . . . ?” I shook my head. “That hurts, Luce. Honestly . . .” I put my hand on my heart. “It gets me right here.”
“In that case,” Lucy said, “please accept my humblest apologies.”
“Apologies accepted.”
She smiled. “Actually, I kind of like wimps, too.”
“You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”
“No, really . . . I do. I’d rather be with a wimp than a non-wimp any day.”
“A non-wimp?”
She grinned. “You know what I mean.”
“All right,” I said. “Name one.”
“One what?”
“A wimp who you like . . . name one.”
“Apart from you?”
I shook my head. “It’s no good trying to distract me with cheap compliments.”
“It wasn’t cheap.”
“Come on,” I said. “Name that wimp.”
“OK . . . all right, let me think. Right . . . a wimp that I like . . .”
As she gazed up at the night sky, trying to think — or maybe just pretending to try to think — of a wimpy guy who she really liked, I did my best not to stare at her, but it was really hard. She looked so good — all muffled up in her coat and hat, with cake crumbs on her lips and chip-dust on her fingers . . . and I wondered if I could really let myself think that this game we were playing was perhaps something more than just a game. Were Lucy’s joke compliments actually real compliments? Was it really possible that she liked me as more than just a friend?
“Spider-Man,” she said suddenly.
“What?”
“Spider-Man . . . a wimp I really like.”
“He’s not a wimp,” I said. “Spidey’s really tough.”
“Yeah, no . . . I don’t mean Spider-Man, I mean the other one, the real one, what’s-his-name, you know . . .” She snapped her fingers, trying to remember the name.
“Peter Parker?”
“Yeah, that’s it. Peter Parker. He’s a wimp, isn’t he?”
“Yeah . . .”
�
�And I like him.”
“No, you don’t. It’s Tobey Maguire that you like.”
She shrugged. “Same thing.”
I laughed. “It’s not the same thing at all. Peter Parker, the fictional character . . . yeah, he’s a wimp. But Tobey Maguire is a Hollywood film star. He’s rich and famous and —”
“Very attractive.”
I made a face. “You think so? He’s kind of a bit loopy-looking, isn’t he?”
“Loopy?”
“Yeah, you know, that loopy kind of lopsided face he’s got —”
“No,” Lucy said. “He’s really cute. And he’s sexy. Do you remember that bit in the first film when he’s hanging upside down in the rain and he kisses what’s-her-name —”
“Mary Jane Watson. MJ.”
“Yeah . . . I mean, that’s a really sexy kiss.”
“Only because he’s still got his mask on, so you can’t see his face.”
“You don’t have to see it. You already know how cute and sexy he is.”
“Mary Jane doesn’t know.”
“Who cares about Mary Jane?”
“I think you’ll find that a lot of people care about Mary Jane, especially when she’s kissing the aforementioned upside-down Spider-Man in the rain, and her shirt is all wet and clingy.”
Lucy laughed, shaking her head and wagging her finger at me. “Now who’s getting their characters and actors mixed up?”
“What?” I said innocently.
“It’s Kirsten Dunst’s rain-soaked shirt that you care about, not Mary Jane’s.”
I shrugged. “Same thing.”
We both started giggling then, and it felt really good — just sitting there, looking at each other, laughing and giggling like two little kids . . . but then, after a while, I think we both slowly realized that the stuff we’d just been talking and laughing about was the kind of stuff that maybe we shouldn’t have been talking and laughing about. Because although we’d only been messing around and enjoying ourselves, and although we’d only been talking about sex in a totally superficial and unsexual way, that still didn’t change the fact that we had been talking about sex. And now that she’d realized it, that, for Lucy, was just too much.
