Numbers

by Rachel Ward

  “I’ve never seen anything so funny in my life! You’re brilliant.”

  “Piss off!” I made to wipe my hand on him, but he ducked away. I chased him around the bags for a bit, before he managed to grab my wrist and pull me down to the ground to forcibly rub my hand on a clump of grass. Most of the stuff came off, and I wiped the rest on my pants. We sat apart from each other. My chest was heaving from the exertion, my lungs sucking in the air in great gulps, until gradually my body calmed down and my breathing got back to normal.

  Spider rooted in one of the bags and swigged at a bottle of Coke, then passed it to me. It was warm, and a bit flat, but it tasted like nectar. Then we gathered up the bags and set off along the path, out into no-man’s-land.

  You wouldn’t believe how uncomfortable I felt walking into that field. After all Spider’s talk of guns, I kept thinking of the space between my shoulder blades, just waiting for a sniper to put a bullet there. The farther we walked away from the stile, the more exposed I felt. I couldn’t have felt more vulnerable if I’d been walking along that path stark naked. There was nothing around us, just grass and sky, more sky than I’d ever seen before, an obscene amount of sky. You don’t realize in a city how much space buildings take up. When you take them away, there’s just sky, huge and empty. There’s nothing between the top of your head and deep space, and it’s only gravity stopping you from drifting up and up, away from the earth. I was thoroughly freaked out. The only way I could tackle it was to look down at the path and put one foot in front of the other.

  In front of me, Spider loped along with his familiar springy stride. I found myself studying the way he moved, his long legs going all the way up to his skinny arse. He’d always seemed so restless at school and around the housing projects, like it was difficult to contain his energy within those walls, those streets and buildings. Here, his legs seemed to eat up the miles. This tall black guy from London looked almost at home here. It was the right scale for him.

  Not like me. Where he sprang along, I plodded, my head full of I can’t…I don’t want to…I hate this. As soon as we’d reached the top of one slope and I thought we were near the cover Spider had spotted, another hill rose up. They were like waves, stretching back as far as you could see.

  Eventually we were walking along the edge of one field, with thick trees lining the other side of the path. There was the sound of water. Spider stopped and put his bags down.

  “Wait here a minute,” he said, took a quick head start, and vaulted over the barbed-wire fence.

  “What are you doing?” I shouted, but he didn’t reply, so I was left standing there like a prat. I sat down, facing the way we’d just come. If I saw people following us, what would I do? I didn’t have time to think of an answer because Spider was soon back, looking smug.

  “There’s a slope and then a river, Jem. This is good news for us. We just need to wade along it for a bit, and then if they’ve got dogs they won’t find us. They’ll lose the scent. I’ve seen it in the movies.”

  Well, I’d seen it in the movies, too, but did that mean anything? There was no stopping him, though.

  “Here, chuck those bags over, and then I’ll help you.” I heaved them over to him, and then looked at the fence.

  “I don’t know…,” I said dubiously.

  “Come here, put one foot on the wire, and your hand on the fence post, and then spring up. I’ll get you.”

  With no better idea, I just did as I was told. The wire bent under my weight, but I thought, What the hell, and tried to climb up. At that moment, Spider reached over and grabbed me under my arms and lifted me clean over, plonking me down safely on the other side. We smiled and high-fived each other. Then we gathered up the bags and set off through the trees.

  The ground dipped sharply down. Sure enough, there was a river at the bottom, only about ten feet wide, fast-flowing and muddy.

  “How deep is it?” I asked.

  “Dunno, only one way to find out. Why don’t we chuck the bags over to the other bank, and then I’ll go in, test it out?”

  “Why don’t you test it out first, before we go tossing our bags? If it’s too deep, we can’t get across, can we? So there’ll be no point having our stuff stuck on the other side.”

  “Jem,” he said seriously, “I think we have to get across. I don’t think we’ve got an option. It’ll be OK, I promise.” He picked up the first plastic bag, tied the handles together, and started swinging it backward and forward, then with a bit of a grunt, let go. It sailed over the water and landed on the other side. He grinned, and set to work on the others. It was OK until the last one. He didn’t quite get it together, and it went too far up in the air and then straight down into the river.

  “Bollocks!” he said and sat down, frantically scrabbling at his sneakers and socks. He rolled up his jeans and then kind of slid down the bank and into the water. “Jesus! “ he screamed, voice high like a girl’s. “It’s like ice!”

  The bag had floated downstream about thirty feet and got stuck on something over near the other bank. He started wading toward it, the water just up to his knees. “Chuck my sneakers over to the other side and then do yours. You can come across. It’s freezing, but it’s OK,” he shouted.

  I stuffed his socks into his shoes and lobbed them over, one after the other. Spider was making his way toward the bag. I crouched down to take my shoes off.

  “Whoa!” Spider was halfway across the river, flailing his arms about. “It’s a bit slippy. You have to be careful,” he called.

  “OK,” I yelled back, and went back to unpicking the knot my laces had got into. Spider was splashing about, swearing like normal, but I wasn’t watching him. Finally, shoes and socks off, I stood up to throw them across. The plastic bag was still there, bobbing about as the water tried to pull it away from whatever was snagging it. But Spider wasn’t. He’d disappeared.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I looked up and down the other bank. Nothing. My eyes scanned the surface of the water — there was no sign of him. The unreality of it was overwhelming. I felt like something in my brain had slipped and shifted: I was alone, Spider had never existed, because if he had, how could he have disappeared like that?

  Suddenly, away to my left, there was an extra movement in the swirling water. Something broke the surface — a knee, an elbow, or something. Spider was about a hundred feet away already, being swept along in the current. I started running down the bank. Different bits of him were visible as the water turned him around like a rag doll — his arm, his back, the back of his head — but not his face. His face stayed underwater.

  I was panicking, running as fast as I could. Branches along the bank whipped me as I ducked and dived my way through. I got level with him, screaming and running at the same time. He couldn’t hear me. I looked wildly around for something to reach him with. I pulled at a long branch, trying to break it off, but I wasn’t strong enough. He was away from me again. The thought of him helpless, breathing in water, made my own breath nearly stop. This wasn’t meant to happen. His number, 12152010, it wasn’t for a week yet. What the hell was going on? I started running again.

  I got thirty, forty feet ahead of him. There was no one around. No one and nothing to help us. I had no choice now. I plunged down the bank and into the water. It wasn’t just the cold that shocked me, it was the strength of it. The river buffeted at my legs with terrifying force. It was only up to my thighs, but it was all I could do to stay on my feet. Down at that level, it was more difficult to see where Spider was. I searched the water frantically, and at last got a glimpse of a dark shape heading toward me. He was going to pass to my left; I had to go toward the other side or he’d slip right past me. I started wading across, but the water was getting deeper. I was so slow, grunting with frustration. Spider was only a few feet away now — damn it, I was going to miss him. I lunged forward. I was there, but my feet were on slime, and as Spider’s body came barreling into me, I lost my footing and went down into the water
, too.

  Everything was mixed up now — up and down, water and air, Spider and me. Even as I thrashed around, I held on to his hoodie. Whatever happened to us now, it was going to happen to us together — I wasn’t going to let go of him for anything. When my face broke the surface I gulped down some air. I kicked my feet around, desperately trying to find the river bottom, but the current was relentless. Spider was like a dead weight, bumping into me, pushing me under. I wanted to straighten him out, get his head above water, but it was hopeless. It was all I could do to find some air myself. Still holding Spider, I got onto my back, so that my face was upward. I tried to flip him over, too, but I couldn’t manage to. We were carried downstream, ’round a couple of bends. I was just wondering if we were going to carry on like this until we got to the ocean, when there was a sickening scraping feeling down my back, and I jarred suddenly to a stop. The jolt made me lose my grip on Spider for a second, but I grabbed him again.

  We’d both stopped moving. The river coursed on around us, but we were wedged on some sort of stony bar, sticking out from one bank into the river. Spider was lying facedown on top of my legs. I hauled him off me and over onto his back, then gripped him under his armpits and pulled him up the sandy spit of land and out of the water. He was heavy, a lifeless weight. I knelt next to him, looking at him with disbelief. His eyes were shut. He was gone.

  This was all wrong — so, so wrong. It wasn’t meant to be like this.

  “Spider, wake up!” I yelled. “Wake up!” Nothing. “Wake up! You can’t fucking leave me! You can’t do this!” I brought my fist down on his chest in sheer frustration. His mouth fell open and water trickled out.

  I drew myself up, leaned over him, and pushed both my palms down hard into his stomach. More water came out. I did it again. And again. And again. Suddenly, a plume of water spurted out of him, like a whale’s spout, and he made the most godawful noise I’d ever heard as he drew a massive breath into his waterlogged body.

  I’d sprung away from him with the surprise of the water, and I just sat back on my heels for a while, watching his chest rise and fall on its own. He opened his eyes and seemed to be trying to focus, then he said, “What you crying for? What’s up with you?”

  I hadn’t realized I was crying, but when I wiped my hand across my face there were hot tears and snot there.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I’m happy.”

  He closed his eyes and opened them again. “I don’t get it. What’s going on?”

  “You fell in the water. I got you out.”

  “Right,” he said, “that’s why I’m all cold and wet, then. I don’t remember a thing. I thought we were walking through a field and then suddenly I’m flat on my back, soaking wet, and you’re crying — sorry, happy.” He started to sit up, looking around him like he’d just landed from another planet. “Here, you’re all wet, too,” he said, then a big grin slowly spread across his face. “You didn’t give me the kiss of life, did you?”

  “No. Shut up.”

  “You did, didn’t you?”

  “No! I squashed your stomach down until the water came out, but I wish I hadn’t now, you bloody moron.”

  He reached over to me and ran his hand over my shaved head, the smile fading away as the situation sunk in. “You saved me. You saved my life. Jesus, Jem, I owe you big time, man.”

  I shrugged him off.

  “Forget about it. I just did what anyone would’ve.”

  “There isn’t anyone else here, though, is there? There was only you. Only you could’ve saved me. And you did.”

  “Just drop it, alright? It’s not a big deal. Look, at least we’re on the right side of the river now. We just need to walk back to our stuff. Get some dry clothes. I’m fucking freezing.” It was true. I was shivering violently, and so was Spider.

  We helped each other to our feet, staggered up the bank, and trudged upstream again. Spider was in front, like usual, but he kept stopping and looking back at me, then smiling, shaking his head, and carrying on. And all the time my mind was racing double-time. So, the numbers were right after all. It wasn’t his day today. But if I hadn’t been there, surely he would have drowned — he was nearly dead when I dragged him out of the water. Spider knew it: I had saved him. I’d kept him alive.

  My head was spinning now. What if he’d been meant to die today, but I’d made things turn out different? For the last couple of weeks, I’d felt guilty about the old tramp. I’d never meant to hurt him, but there was no escaping it: It felt like we’d chased him into the road. But perhaps the numbers were a two-edged sword. What if I didn’t just have a hand in causing death — what if I could save lives, too? And if I had saved Spider today, could I save him on the fifteenth?

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Our bags were still lying where we’d chucked them. Spider fished out the one in the river with a branch, and we both found some dry clothes, turning our backs on each other while we got changed. I was too cold — almost panicky cold — to worry if he was peeking, and too busy getting myself dry to think of sneaking a peek at him. In the hurry to leave, I hadn’t got any spare underwear from Val — frankly, I didn’t want to think about what she might wear under her clothes — so I kept my soggy bra and panties on and just changed my jeans and top. I put on as many dry layers as I could find, with Val’s coat on top, and we bundled our wet clothes together in one bag and set off again — cold, shocked, and shivering.

  Walking away from the river, we hit another series of rolling hills. More green waves, going on forever. Our adventure in the river had left me feeling dog-tired. My legs felt like lead as we trudged along. Not surprisingly, a bit of the spring had gone out of Spider’s step, too.

  We were still aiming for a little knot of trees on top of a hill. I was beginning to think they were like one of those mirage things in the desert, disappearing just when you got near them, but eventually Spider got to the top of one hill and gave a little shout —“Hey, we’re here!”—and amazingly, we were. We scrambled down the other side and up the last rise, and into the relative cover of a little clump of woodland.

  I sank down at the edge of the trees and looked back at the way we’d come. I couldn’t believe it was so far. “Look how far we’ve walked! No wonder I’m knackered.” I flopped backward, not caring what I was lying on.

  “If we can see all of that, anyone there could see us. Let’s go farther in,” Spider said. I didn’t know what was happening to him: It was like he’d suddenly swallowed a sensible pill or something.

  I groaned, struggled to my feet again, and followed him into the middle of the woods. He’d gathered up all the bags and found a place between four tree trunks to settle down. Although you could still see out to the fields when you stood up, when you were sitting down the plants and bushes blotted them all out. We were hidden.

  The ground was hard and uneven. Spider had spread out the blanket he’d been carrying. You could still feel lumps and bumps underneath you, but it softened it a bit.

  Spider was sitting propped up against a tree trunk, but I lay down flat and looked up at the trees above me. It was weird. Although I knew the trunks were pretty straight, they looked like they were bending together over me as they stretched up into the sky. Their leaves were black against the brightness, making a lacy pattern, almost too complicated to look at. It was like they were hypnotic. If you let yourself go, you started to get all mixed up in your head, and you could imagine that you were high up, looking down hundreds of feet to the leaves below you. The wind was swooshing through the branches, making this amazing spaced-out sound — it could have been wind or water or even traffic. Really soothing.

  “I can’t believe we just did that,” I said after a while.

  “What?”

  “Walked all that way.”

  Spider snorted. “Yeah, it’s pretty cool what you can do when you have to. Perhaps we’ll walk all the way to Weston.”

  “How far’s that?”

  “Haven’t got a clue. A lon
g way, man.”

  I groaned again, and shut my eyes, and let my mind focus on the noise, only the noise…

  When I woke up, my head was aching and my mouth felt disgusting — dry inside and sticky ’round my lips. I had to struggle to remember where I was, and even when I sat up and looked around I wasn’t sure if it was morning or evening. My watch said five past four, which I guessed was the end of the afternoon, but it could have been the next morning, I just didn’t know. Spider was snoring away with his back to me, curled up like a baby. I could see the side of his face. Asleep, you could imagine him as a child — he was peaceful, kind of innocent. Just for a minute, I tested out the feeling: what it might be like to be someone’s mum. It made me feel scared — there was no way that was for me. I could never handle that much responsibility, and besides, how could I ever look a child — my own child — in the face and see their death before they’d even begun? Some people aren’t cut out for all that. I was one of them. No big deal.