Fragments

by Caroline Green

  Anyway, the point is that I have lost everything before and I found a way to live. If I can force myself to think only about the very next thing I need, and not look at the big, scary picture, I can stop myself from going completely crazy. I’ve been through bad times before and I somehow survived. Can I get through this? I don’t know yet. All I can do is clean my face and try to rest for a bit.

  There’s a sort of open metal box on the wall and when I look into it, I can see a thin puddle of greenish water. No good. But horses need fresh water, don’t they? So there must be some in one of the other stalls.

  The thought of going into an enclosed space with one of those hot, snorting monsters fills me with dread. I’ll get kicked to death. And do they bite? I don’t know, do I?

  But I’m suddenly so thirsty I think I’ll die without some water to drink, let alone to clean my face up with. Decisively, I push open the door again and listen. I can hear a beep-beep-beep outside. I reckon it’s the lorry reversing out of the yard. I slip into the next stall where a massive, conker-brown horse eyes me with a starey, mad expression.

  Horses are weird. Its eyes are messing with my head a bit. Like it can see inside. Don’t be stupid, Kyla . . .

  ‘Hey, horse,’ I say, dumbly. My voice is all croaky and doesn’t sound like me at all. My cheek hurts when I talk. ‘Good boy. Nice horsey. Gonna share a drink with me, yeah? Good horsey.’

  The stall stinks of hot animal sweat and worse. For a second I’m overwhelmed by the size of this muscle machine. It seems to fill the space. The metal water container is on the side in this stall, rather than at the front. It’s right by the bloody horse. I gently edge forwards. The horse makes a snorty-snuffly noise and its nostrils flare in a scary way. Its head is up and it shifts its big heavy feet. Maybe this is what horses do right before they charge at you . . .

  ‘Nice horsey, nice horsey, just share a little drinkie with old Kyla, OK?’ I’m mumbling all sorts of rubbish as I edge towards the water box. The horse snuffles again and steps back, away from me. Maybe it’s scared of me? This gives me confidence for half a second until I realise what it would be like if this enormous, snorting monster panicked in such a small space. I picture myself trampled to death and my heart rate kicks up a few notches.

  But I force myself to take another couple of steps before reaching a shaky hand into the metal box. There is water in there but it’s warm and yucky. There’s probably horse spit in it and the thought makes me gag. But I’m so thirsty I reach over anyway and splash some onto my face, never letting my eyes stray from the horse’s. We’re eyeballing each other now. The water doesn’t smell or anything and I ignore the bits of straw in there, cupping my hands to slosh the warm wetness in the general direction of my mouth. It only makes me more thirsty and before I know what I’m doing, I’ve dipped my whole face in to drink, like I’m a horse too.

  My face screams with pain. Maybe I’m really badly hurt. Oh God, what if the wound gets infected? Antibiotics are more precious than gold these days. The ones Cal gave me for my chest before have all gone now. I have to get my cheek clean. I plunge my face into the box and frantically rub until the water swirls pink.

  After a bit I stop and edge slowly backwards from the stall. The horse dips its head and, for a crazy second, I think it’s saying goodbye. This makes me want to cry and I have to bite down on my hand to stop myself.

  I slip back out of the door and into the next stall. I bunch the straw up as high as it will go just inside the door, hoping that anyone giving a brief glance over won’t see me unless they look carefully. Trembling all over, I drop down and cover myself.

  It’s like being jabbed with a thousand needles and all the scratches I hadn’t noticed before on my arms suddenly hurt like hell. I thought it would be sweet-smelling, soft and comfortable. Let me tell you, straw is nothing like that. Must have got the romantic view from those stories Mum used to read from her Bible, the one her own mum brought from Jamaica all those years ago.

  I’m so tired that, even with the itching and the horse pooey smells and the pain in my face, I think I can sleep. I close my eyes and try to make myself small, drawing my knees up like I’m a baby again. The images rattle through my head straight away: the helicopters with the beating blades, the explosion, the feeling of the hard dirt against my face. They play over and over and I can’t stop them coming.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I whisper through my dry, sore lips. Maybe I made it happen. I was jealous and now everyone’s dead. This feels like poison inside me. I can never un-know it . . . I can never undo it . . .

  Helicopter blades thump and then turn into wings flapping with a heartbeat rhythm. Black bird-like things closing in on me with their claws outstretched, with tattered, smoking wings.

  But someone is here to help me now. A good angel. Blond, wavy hair curls around a small face with a pointy chin. Sparkly blue eyes with long sandy lashes. Freckles smattered across a cute, snub nose. A small pink tongue runs across pale, dry lips.

  The face is right over mine.

  Then I understand that I’m not dreaming. This is real.

  CHAPTER 3

  picnic

  I scoot backwards like a crab, straw flying up around me so I start sneezing.

  ‘Bless you!’ she says with a tinkly laugh, except it comes out as ‘Bleth’ and I notice the gap where she has lost her front milk teeth.

  ‘Who are you?’ I whisper. I’m looking beyond her, expecting to see a couple of Counterinsurgency and Anti-Terrorism Squad dudes all tooled up there, ready to cart me off. I feel around in the straw with one hand, not moving my eyes from hers. Maybe I can find a stone or something to throw at them when they come for me.

  ‘I’m Ariella. I’m six. Who are you? And why are you in my daddy’s barn?’

  She’s stopped smiling. I realise I might be scaring her now.

  ‘Um, I’m . . .’ Shall I tell her my name? ‘I’m Kyla.’ Too late. I’m not properly thinking straight. I have a ferocious headache over one eye and my cheek . . . man, that hurts. I lift my hand slowly to it and dab with my fingers. There’s a big semi-circle of skin missing, I think. Pain zigzags over my cheek and up to my scalp.

  ‘What did you do to your face?’ she says curiously.

  I hesitate.

  ‘I fell.’ I know it’s lame. I expect her eyes to narrow in suspicion. I’m still thinking whoever is with her is about to come storming in here too. ‘I hurt it on the ground.’ But the corners of her mouth turn down and her eyes seem to shine a little more.

  ‘It looks really sore,’ she says sadly.

  ‘Yes, it really is sore,’ I agree. I find that I’m nodding weirdly. I never know what to say to children. Jax was great at that. Sometimes he had half the kids on the estate hanging off him like Christmas lights on a tree.

  Ariella’s face brightens. ‘My mummy has special cream that she put on her tummy when Kit came out of it. He’s my brother and he’s boring because he cries a lot.’ She makes a disgusted face that’s almost funny. ‘Mummy says the special cream made her tummy better really quickly. Shall I bring it for you?’

  I sit up a bit straighter and attempt a smile. Which hurts my face.

  ‘That would be great. Do you think you could bring me water and something to eat too, um, Ariella?’

  There’s a beat while she considers me and then she smiles again. ‘We’ve got flapjacks. Do you like flapjacks? I do but I don’t like cheese. So I won’t bring any.’

  I keep smiling, even though it hurts my face.

  ‘Got it, no cheese then.’ I try to sound bright. ‘Anything else is fine. Thank you. And, um, Ariella?’

  She has turned away but she looks back at me, blowing a spiral of blond hair away from her face. ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Can it just be our secret? Me being in here? I might get into trouble with your mummy and daddy and then I’d have to go away. So can we make it a special secret?’ I feel like I’m pleading with her.

  A sly look crosses her face then and
she lifts her finger to her lips, miming ‘Shhh.’ I do it back and she leaves the barn.

  It takes her almost an hour to come back, according to my phone, which is somehow still working. I’m thinking about getting the hell out of here when I hear footsteps outside the stall. The door creaks open.

  I didn’t really notice what she was wearing before. But I think she must have changed. Now she has on a fancy-dress witch costume in shiny green material. It’s all twisted around her waist. I think the buttoning has gone a bit wrong along the line. She has a streak of something purple around her lips (my money’s on Ribena) and her bare legs are thrust into pink-spotted wellies that have mud thickly crusted around the soles.

  She’s carrying a large backpack decorated in pictures of Gomez, the annoying rat thing off the telly that kids go mad for. With another sly look back at me she kicks the stall door closed with a neat back heel before wrenching open the bag and tipping out the contents, which are:

  – A packet of baby wipes.

  – A bottle of cherryade.

  – Several squashed flapjacks spilling out of a pink paper napkin.

  – Two boxes of raisins.

  – One of those ultra-thin sleeping bags that crumple into nothing. (Zander had one and they cost a bomb.) They’re brilliant . . .

  – A pot of something cosmetic. ‘Mummy’s cream’, no doubt.

  – A hairbrush and several butterfly hair-clips.

  – A small plastic Gomez figure.

  – A lipstick without a lid ...

  OK . . .

  Ariella frowns anxiously at me. ‘Did I do well?’ she says.

  ‘You did brilliantly,’ I say, croaky because my throat is dry. ‘You’re a total star.’

  Her face lights up with pleasure and she unselfconsciously lifts up her skirt over chubby knees so she can sit down cross-legged.

  It’s quickly obvious that she intends to have some of this stuff too. To her, it’s just a picnic. When she cracks open the bottle of cherryade and takes a lusty drink before me, it’s all I can do not to snatch it away from the greedy brat before she can glug the lot. I clear my throat and she makes startled eyes and blushes.

  ‘O-oh,’ she says, hiccupping. ‘I should let you have some first. You’re probably much more thirstier than I am. Mummy says I’m selfish and need to stop putting myself before everyone else.’ Her little mouth has gone all turned down again. I can’t help thinking she’s cute now, despite the not-being-keen-on-kids thing.

  ‘I don’t think you’re selfish. I think you’re a very kind person,’ I say and lift the bottle to my lips. It’s so sweet and good as it runs into my mouth that I gulp too fast and a wave of nausea comes up inside. I get a weird urge to cry because I’m so grateful. Ariella’s smiling shyly now as she goes up onto her knees and neatly picks up a squashed bit of flapjack between finger and thumb to offer to me.

  I bob my head and say, ‘Why thank you, milady.’

  Ariella giggles throatily and stuffs a huge piece of flapjack into her mouth sideways.

  I eat quickly and then grab a box of raisins before she can nick it. I wasn’t hungry until I started eating but now I’m ravenous. I give little reassuring smiles to Ariella as I scoff and she grins back. She seems to have got the message and hasn’t taken the other box of raisins.

  ‘So why are you in my daddy’s barn?’ she says suddenly. My insides plummet. I was hoping she’d forgotten about that. But she’s not stupid. She knows that finding a girl covered in bruises in her dad’s barn isn’t exactly normal, even these days.

  ‘Well,’ I say slowly, searching in my brain for the right words to use. ‘My house burned down.’ God, why did I say that? I’m trying to think how to put it so she won’t get scared and grass me up. ‘Er . . . and I have nowhere to go now. I’ve lost all my things.’

  Her eyes are practically circles now and her bottom lip hangs open, still glistening with cherryade.

  ‘Did your mummy and daddy get hurt?’ she says.

  ‘I haven’t got a mummy or a daddy,’ I say carefully. ‘But my friends got hurt.’

  Ariella’s eyes fill with fat tears. ‘You must be very sad,’ she says fiercely.

  ‘Yes.’ I’m doing that mad nodding thing again. ‘I am. But, er, I might get into trouble if anyone knows I’m here so I need you to still keep this as your best secret, OK?’

  Weirdly, she doesn’t question the bit about getting into trouble. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the world we live in. Even kids know it’s best just to shut up sometimes. They know that people, teachers even, are there some days and then gone the next. And it’s wise not to ask what happened to them.

  Ariella goes to take the raisins and then draws her hand back again, looking at me through lowered lids. I don’t know what to say. I have an image of her suddenly yelling for her parents. I need to keep her sweet. Maybe she can get me some clothes and once I’m cleaned up I can get on my way.

  ‘Your hair’s all tangly,’ she says. ‘Shall I make it nice for you?’

  I smile. ‘That would be lovely. But can I clean up my sore face first?’

  Ten minutes later, I’m gritting my teeth as she claws the brush through my tangled hair. I’ve used the baby wipes to clean up my cheek and slathered on some of her mum’s cream. It smells horrible but as soon as it’s on my face, the pain eases up. I endure a few more minutes of her tugging and try to explain that my hair is different from hers because I’m mixed race, and then she’s shoving in the various butterfly clips all around my face.

  She sits back and surveys her work, giving a deep sigh. ‘You’re pretty,’ she says. ‘Even with a sore, poorly face.’

  I smile at her. ‘So are you,’ I say. ‘Even with cherryade all round your chops.’

  Her belly laugh at this is infectious. I don’t know what I’ve got to laugh about, though. I still have nowhere to go and everyone is . . . everyone is dead.

  I feel myself freefalling inside and for a second I’m scared I’m going to start howling at the pain threatening to engulf me. Ariella puts a chubby hand on mine. I look down and notice that a couple of my nails still have faint traces of the purple sparkly polish I put on a lifetime ago. Glancing up I see that Ariella has her finger to her lips. And that’s when I realise someone is calling her. A woman, sounding irritable.

  ‘Where are you? Ari-e-llaaaaa!’

  She leans over and whispers in my ear, her breath hot and fierce. ‘I’ll come back in the morning. I’ll bring some of Mummy’s clothes and some breakfast.’

  I nod gratefully and she opens the door of the stall with surprising care. I hear the shushy sound of her wellies in the straw as she leaves the stables.

  ‘There you are! What have you got all over your face?’ says the woman, who I presume to be her mother. ‘It’s bath-time! I’ve been calling for ages.’

  ‘Sorry, Mummy,’ Ariella replies in a sing-song way and I hear the voices recede.

  The light is fading now and when I look at my watch I see it’s after eight in the evening. I still don’t know whether I should try to get away but I have nowhere to go. I can’t seem to think straight. Maybe a night here will help sort out my head a bit?

  And I am really tired. Cold now, too.

  Plus, and this is the worst bit . . . I need to pee. I go into the stall next door, where the big old horse now stands with its head drooping and eyes closed and pee in the corner of the stall.

  ‘Sorry, horse,’ I say under my breath. I wash my hands in the water box and feel guilty about that too.

  Back in the empty stall and feeling relieved, I open the feather-light sleeping bag and wriggle inside it. I pull the hood part over my head and try to bunch some straw underneath to make a pillow. Then I close my eyes.

  My dreams aren’t of death and violence this time.

  They’re much crueller.

  I dream about Mum, stirring something at the cooker, her big hips swaying as she hums along to a song on the radio. She turns and gives me a look of love that
’s like being wrapped in layers of silk. Then I’m sitting with Jax on the sofa at Zander’s place. We’re playing a game of Insurgent Cell on the X Station and although I’m not really fussed about video games, I’m beating his ass as usual. I tease him and he laughs, because he’s like that, Jax. Never bears a grudge. His face changes into Cal’s and he’s leaning over me for a kiss. Our lips touch and it’s all sweet. Then he draws back and his nice brown eyes crinkle in a smile.

  Happiness feels like warm honey seeping up my spine. I’ve got everyone I need. My family. My best bud. My boy. That’s when my eyes crack open, sore and swollen, and it all rushes at me like a car going ninety. There’s only me now. And BAM there it is again, the pain. I curl up in a ball, wrapping my arms around myself. It feels worse than ever before, so bad I think it might kill me this time. I wish it would.

  I never knew that sadness was a physical thing before. I’ve learned a lot about it lately. I could get myself a PhD in heartache. My body rocks as waves of grief slam into me but no more tears come. Crying is too easy. Getting up on your feet and living is the hard thing. But what choice do I have?

  I have to find a way to carry on. Somehow. And that’s when I start to think I’ve been getting it all wrong until now. I wanted people around me; friends, maybe a boyfriend too. But everyone I care about gets snatched away from me. It’s love that brings all this pain. I need to learn not to care about anyone. My insides feel as though they are raw and bleeding with all the losses. I have to make myself hard inside. I thought I was so tough but I’m not, not really. There’s only me now.

  I need to find a way to carry on and live.

  Some time later I hear light footsteps outside the stall and the door creaks open again. Ariella’s small white face pokes around the door and a smile lights it up.

  ‘I thought I’d dreamed you up!’ she says, coming in. ‘Or that if you were real, you’d have gone away by now.’