Numbers

by Rachel Ward

  Even in the dark, I could see his big grin. “I’ll be alright. I’ve got you and your blade to protect me. You can be my bodyguard.”

  “Sod off,” I said. I felt stupid now, for bringing it with me. “It’s just being out at night. I didn’t feel safe.”

  “I’m not criticizing, man. It’s cool. Got one myself.”

  “Put the bloody envelope away before someone sees, and let’s get out of here.”

  He stuffed it back in his pocket and we set off again. He was strutting now, like the cat that got the cream. I didn’t want to spoil it for him, but I did want him to think about it before he got in too deep.

  “Spider, Baz is using you. If it wasn’t risky, he’d do it himself, whatever it is you’re doing. You’re the one who’ll get busted. Fancy a spell on the inside, do you?”

  “Nah, I’ll be fine. I’m careful. I’ll just do it for a few months. Couple of years and I’ll be out of here. You can go a long, long way with a little money in your pocket.”

  And I thought, with a chill, You’re not going anywhere, mate. Another couple of weeks in this hole, that’s all. And it made me feel sad, so sad. The thing was, with Spider and me, something weird was happening. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t just observing. I’d got involved. I was starting to hope that his number was wrong, that it was all just in my head, not real. But I knew that it was real. One way or another, he was checking out in two weeks, and, God help me, I wanted to protect him. More than that, I wanted to save him.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Of course, Karen was waiting for me when I got in, and I got the usual grief from her. To try and calm her down, I went back to school, but a week later it all blew up again, big style. To be honest, most of the kids that had tormented me before left me alone. Someone had seen me at the party, and the association with Baz was keeping them quiet. Friends in high places. There were still a few comments about me and Spider and the company we were keeping, but they were mostly teasing; it wasn’t so sly, and there was a bit of respect now.

  “Don’t upset Jem. She’s a gangsta now! Gangsta babe!”

  I was starting to see why Spider was walking taller. It felt good not to be at the bottom of the heap.

  But on the edge of this, all the time, were Jordan and his crew. He’d reappeared at school on the Monday after Baz’s party and kept his distance from me, but I knew he was watching. Biding his time. Three rows behind me in the classroom, the thought of his eyes on the back of my head made my scalp itch.

  He broke cover one day during morning recess. I was walking ’round by the science lab when I realized there were people closing in behind me. I looked ’round, and saw two of Jordan’s mates following. I thought, Sod it, I’m not going to run, and kept on walking, ’round the corner and right into Jordan himself. His hand shot out, and he pushed me in the middle of my chest.

  “Where you going, gangsta?”

  “None of your fucking business. Just let me get past.”

  “No, I want to talk to you.”

  “I’ve got nothing to say to you.” I was talking tough, but feeling trapped, my heart pounding away like crazy. They’d got me in a quiet corner; there were five of them altogether. I didn’t stand a chance unless I called on my secret friend. My hand tightened around the handle of the knife in my pocket.

  “I don’t like you, Jem, and I don’t like your boyfriend.”

  “He’s not my —”

  “Shut up! I’m talking.” He liked it, that feeling of power. It irritated me, how a prick like him had to have all his boys there to intimidate me. I know I should have kept my eyes down, said nothing, perhaps taken a punch or two, let it all blow over. But he’d got under my skin, and I wasn’t thinking straight.

  I pulled the knife out and held it in front of me. “No, you shut up. I don’t want to hear it. I just want you to let me get past and leave me alone.”

  They’d all frozen. Every one of them was looking at the blade. Taking the advantage, I shoved past Jordan, who gave no resistance. I had a split second of feeling relieved before I ran straight into McNulty. Instantly, he grabbed my wrist and squeezed so hard that the knife fell to the ground. Still holding me, he took a hankie from his pocket, bent down, and picked up the knife in it, like a copper on the telly retrieving his evidence. There was no mistaking his air of triumph. He’d got me now. He’d got the evidence. Tosser.

  “It’s all over, bell’s about to ring. Get on to your classrooms,” he boomed. “You,” he said to me, with grim satisfaction, “are coming with me.”

  With my wrist still clamped in his grip, he led me to the headmaster’s office. We didn’t wait outside like usual. Still holding on to me, McNulty walked straight past the school secretary in her office and knocked on the head’s door, walking in there and then, full of self-importance. “Headmaster, we’ve got a serious issue to deal with here. I caught Jem Marsh threatening another pupil with a knife on school grounds.” He placed the knife on the head’s desk.

  The head, who’d been signing some papers, visibly recoiled, like McNulty had lobbed a ticking bomb in front of him. “Right. I see,” he said, looking rapidly from me to the Nutter and back again. Then he picked up the phone. “Miss Lester, ring the police and ask them to come here, please. We’ve got a pupil with a knife. Yes. Thank you. And ring the home contact for Miss Marsh. They’d better get down here, too.”

  And then it started: the questions, the lectures, the accusations, the disappointment. Not just the head and the police; they got Karen and my social worker, Sue, in, too. The office was bulging at the seams by the time they were all there. “I don’t think you realize what trouble you’re in — carrying an offensive weapon, threatening behavior, and this on top of disruptive behavior in the classroom, insolence, bullying…”

  And on and on and on. I blanked them all out, just sat there while they talked at me. I wanted to believe that if I just kept quiet, eventually they would run out of steam, and it would all go away, but even I couldn’t kid myself this time. The knife sat on the desk in front of me — a silent witness. Big mistake bringing that to school, I kept thinking. Big mistake. This was serious business now. I was well and truly in the shit.

  Eventually, it was agreed that I would be interviewed further at the police station. You could feel the ripple of excitement passing through the school as I was carted away in the cop car. There were kids hanging out of the windows, others gathered in doorways. As they led me out, I thought, This is probably the last time I’ll be here. But I didn’t care about the school or the kids there. It was only when I thought about Spider that I felt a sharp twinge in my stomach. If they locked me up now, would I ever see him again?

  They did it all formally — booked me, searched me, took my fingerprints. I think they were doing it to frighten me, but I wasn’t that bothered. I’d kind of withdrawn from everything. I was there, but I was keeping myself to myself — watching what was going on, but not feeling it.

  I went along with everything, didn’t cause no trouble, but didn’t tell them one thing. They tried being nice: “You’ve got to understand that it’s very dangerous to carry a knife. It’s just as likely to be used back on you. Let’s have a cup of tea and talk about it.” They tried threatening me: “You’re looking at custody if this gets to court. They’re cracking down on little thugs like you.”

  They got nothing.

  Karen and Sue took turns sitting in with me. They tried to get me to talk, too. Karen was desperate to coax something out of me — her chance of being the one to reform me was slipping away. She wasn’t used to failure.

  “Jem, it’s important that you tell us everything you can. I don’t believe that you’re a violent person. You’ve not shown that at home. Something happened, didn’t it? If you tell us, it will help us to understand.”

  Her words started to break through my brick wall, worming their way into my head. She was getting to me, making me think that I could be listened to, but where would I start? With Jordan,
with McNulty, with Spider and the party, with Mum, with knowing that you’re never really safe anywhere and that it was all going to end sometime today, tomorrow, the next day? I couldn’t do it — it would be like scooping out the soft flesh from a snail’s shell. Once it was all out there, there would be nothing to protect me. I fixed my eyes on the floor, tried to block out her voice, to stay strong.

  A long five hours later, I was released back into Karen’s care, with an appointment to go back to the police station in three days’ time to hear whether I was going to be charged. On top of that I had a monthlong expulsion from school. I was grounded at Karen’s while Social Services decided what to do with me. All I could do was sit and wait, knowing another move was coming up, another “fresh start,” somewhere away from the housing projects, and away from Spider, the only friend I’d ever had.

  I sat in my room, boiling at the injustice. Why hadn’t they picked up Jordan for bullying? Why pick on me, when I was just defending myself? Why did they think things would be any better for me anywhere else? Moving you on doesn’t solve the problem — it just gets you out of one person’s hair and into someone else’s.

  I brought my fist down on the bed. It hardly made a noise, just bounced up again — a pathetic gesture. I got up and swept my arm across the top of the chest of drawers. My hairbrush and earrings and a couple of books flew across the room. It wasn’t enough. I ripped up a T-shirt. That was better. I shredded what I could, threw the rest around wildly. My CD player was blasting out the Chili Peppers. I grabbed it and wrenched it away from the wall. The plug came out, and I hurled it with all my strength toward the mirror. The mirror was shattered but the CD player was still in one piece. I picked it up again and flung it against the wall. Bits of plastic flew off, but the main set was still recognizable. It wasn’t once I’d opened the window and lobbed it as far as I could, though. Like a dropped milk bottle, it shattered on impact as it hit the front path.

  Karen rocketed through my door. Instead of the hot blast of rage, there was cold fury as she took in the state of my room.

  “You silly girl,” she said. “What have you got left now?” And she walked away. I listened to her footsteps going heavily down the stairs as I slid down one wall and clutched my knees to my chest. I hadn’t had a lot of stuff to start with, and now I’d trashed it, leaving more or less the clothes I had on — that was all. It didn’t add up to much.

  I was tired of being me. All the shit I’d put up with over the years, being apart from people, on my own. And just when things were starting to get better, everything had gone wrong again. I huddled there, a tight ball of blackness. And then, a strangely comforting thought trickled through me — I had nothing, so I could do anything now. Anything I wanted. I had nothing left to lose.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I woke up on the floor, surrounded by broken stuff, my stuff. The last thought that I’d had before I went to sleep was still in my head: I had nothing left to lose. What more could they do to me than they were already planning?

  I checked my watch, still working despite a cracked face: twenty to seven in the morning. I unpeeled my stiff legs, got to my feet, and picked my way across the floor. Then out onto the landing and carefully downstairs. I swigged some orange juice from the carton and stuck some bread in the toaster; then, when it popped up, slathered on some peanut butter and walked out, eating as I went.

  Not many people around, although that background buzz was there. It’s always there in London. I nipped up someone’s front path and grabbed a pint of milk sitting outside the door in the cold: something to wash down the toast.

  I felt better than I had in a long time. I knew that sooner or later they’d catch up with me — lecture me, confine me, move me — but for now, for this moment, I was free.

  I took my pint of milk down to the canal and drank it, perching on the sleepers where I’d had my first conversation with Spider. Light started seeping into the edge of the sky. As it started to spread, everything was gray: the buildings, the walls, the water, the sky. You could take a color photo and it would be the same as a black-and-white one. It matched my mood — I was calm, muted, living in the moment, just hanging.

  When I’d finished the milk, or nearly, I put the bottle on the edge of the canal bank and scooped up a handful of stones. One by one, I aimed them at the bottle. Some went past, you could hear them enter the water — plip! When they hit the target, it wobbled, threatened to fall over the edge, but didn’t quite do it. I scuffed the ground with my sneaker, looking for bigger stones. I found a couple and concentrated hard. The first one missed, plopped into the canal. The second one got it right on the neck, took it over the edge, just like that, hitting the water with a smack! I got up and peered over. The bottle was bobbing about on its side, the dregs of the milk still slopping around, moving slowly to the left, heading for the Thames. I thought, I should have put a message in it. For some reason, that tickled me: the thought of some kid in France or Holland wading out into the sea to get my bottle and pulling out a bit of paper to find my message: Up Yours. Greetings from England.

  The bottle was a good sixty feet away from me now. I had half a mind to follow it, see where we both ended up, but that wasn’t how I wanted to spend my last few hours of freedom before they picked me up. I wanted to say good-bye to my only friend; so instead, I turned back up the path to the shops and headed ’round to Spider’s house. It was still only half past seven and there were no signs of life. I went up to the front door and my hand hovered over the doorbell. I felt unsure, like I’d look a bit desperate, needy, just showing up like that, so early. I gently tried the door, just in case. It moved beneath my fingers, and a wisp of smoke came floating out through the gap.

  I pushed the door open and went in, and there she was in the kitchen: Val, on her perch, with a cup of tea in one hand and a smoke in the other. Damn, did that woman sleep there?

  “Alright, love?” she said, like she’d been expecting me. “Come in.” I went farther into the room. “You’re an early bird. You in trouble?” I nodded. “There’s some tea in that pot. Get yourself a cup from the sink, love, and come and sit down.”

  And that’s how Spider found us when he emerged at about nine: me and Val side by side at the breakfast counter, second pot of tea on the stove, mound of cigarette ashes on the saucer between us. He shambled into the kitchen with some track pants and an old stained T-shirt on, eyes sort of small and puckered, like he’d been asleep for a hundred years. He looked a mess at the best of times, but this was something else, like someone had crumpled him up and thrown him away.

  “What’s all this?” he asked, once the shock of seeing someone other than his nan there had sunk in.

  “Jem’s come ’round to see you. She’s in a bit of trouble, aren’t you?”

  He looked at me, and I said, “I’m in the shit, Spider. They’re going to move me again.” And for some reason, I could feel a little tremble in my chin when I looked at him. I turned away quickly, feeling stupid. And then, bless him, he said exactly the right thing.

  “Stuff ’em, Jem. Let’s have a day out. I’ve got some spends.” Val’s eyes flicked up to search his face at that. “They’ll be looking for you ’round here. Let’s go into town.” He was starting to dance about on his toes again, the familiar energy fizzing through him. He clapped his hands together. “OK, let’s go! Pour me a cuppa, Nan, and I’ll get me sneakers on.”

  “I think you’ve got time to take a shower and find some clean clothes, Terry. There’s a load of clean stuff in the hall.”

  Spider’s face registered agony and disgust.

  “I’m fine, Nan. Don’t nag.”

  “You’re not fine. You could cut the air with a knife around you, you smelly article!” she said, lighting another smoke.

  She turned to me. “Boys! What can you do?” Despite his protest, I noticed Spider sloping out of the room, and when he came back he was in jeans and a clean T-shirt. There’s no way he’d taken a shower, though, not that
quickly. He slurped down his tea and bent to kiss Val.

  “I suppose I should tell you to go to school, you naughty kids, but seeing as you’re both suspended”—she winked one of those piercing hazel eyes —“you go and have a good day out. I won’t say nothing if anyone comes ’round here.”

  She looked at me, not smiling, but there was a warmth underneath, you could tell, and I thought, You lucky sod, Spider, having a nan like this. If I’d had someone like her in my life, things could have been completely different.

  He grabbed his hoodie on our way through the front room, called out, “Bye, Nan, see you later,” and we were gone.

  Everything was up and running now, the traffic in full swing, people out and about. Earlier, it had felt like the city was mine; I’d owned the peace and quiet, just me. But now me and Spider were two ants in a city of millions, nothing more than that. The sun was out now, too. It was turning into one of those bright, crisp winter days.

  “Don’t have to walk today, we can get the Tube. Could get a taxi, if you wanted — just about.”