Fifteen Bones

  At sunset nothing in her room had moved.

  On Monday morning I woke to harsh light streaming through my curtainless window. I licked my furry teeth. I checked Robin’s landfill bedroom. Nothing had moved. I went to the bathroom and heaved.

  I took a shower but only washed the lower part of my body. When I got dressed, my trousers wouldn’t stay up so I tightened my belt into a tiny knot. I checked my parents’ room: dead as a grave. I went downstairs and ate three red jelly squares. I went back upstairs and tried to see the back of my hair in the mirror. I prodded at the gaps. I went to look out of my window one last time then walked outside into the autumn light.

  Leaves kicked about the road. I pulled my beanie cap over my head and coughed. The cough burned my chest. I put a fist to my chest and regurgitated the jelly squares. It looked like I’d hacked up my liver. I looked at it for a while and then I went to school.

  It was afternoon registration before I saw Kane. I didn’t notice when he sat down next to me. He said my name like he’d been saying it for a while. “Jaaaaaake?”

  I sat up with a start and met his brown eyes.

  “Since when did you start wearing beanies?”

  I scratched beneath the cap until a mumble came out. “Sorry?”

  “Where were you all morning? Weren’t you supposed to be in art? You were on the register.”

  I scratched my neck and tried to lean away from him. I was worried about him touching me, and about my breath. “Didn’t feel like it.”

  “Where did you go?”

  My cupboard.

  For three hours.

  That’s why I smell like a tomb.

  “Around,” I said.

  “Nutter. Art’s all right,” he said. “Miss Bailey’s safe. It’s quite relaxing.”

  “Was Ritchie Darscall there?”

  “No, they don’t let him do art because he kept ruining everyone’s stuff.”

  “Charming.”

  Kane leaned closer. He smelled of trees, not just their woody scent but the coolness of the air around them. “You keep missing everything, your parents’ll get a text message.”

  “Yeah, that text thing is a pain in the arse. I changed my mum’s number on the thing.”

  “Did you?” Kane smiled. “You’re suspect, Jake. You really are.”

  I was getting the shakes. They started in my chest and rumbled through my body. I jittered my leg to cover them up.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m not very good-looking and I have a terrible personality.”

  Kane laughed. “What’s going on with the girl next door?”

  “We spent the day together on Friday, and now she’s gone. Like, gone gone. I went and spoke to her mum, but she just goes, ‘I ain’t seen her.’ Like she really didn’t care. But she went off to the park in the middle of the night, and now she hasn’t come back.”

  “She probably round her mate’s,” Kane said.

  “But why wouldn’t her mum care?”

  “Parents just give up, innit. When you’re about eleven they think, Oh, sod this.”

  “Yeah.” For the first time ever I thought about that look my mother gives me and felt calm. “Did yours?”

  “No, to be fair, my mum and dad think I’m amazing.”

  I put my head on the desk.

  A supply teacher bustled in and sifted through a stack of papers, breaking into a sweat under his thick hair.

  “Supply!” the class screeched.

  “You know any of her other mates?” Kane asked, concluding that we didn’t need to listen to this particular teacher.

  “No.” I thought of her bare walls and abandoned phone. “I don’t think she’s got any.”

  “Everyone’s got friends,” Kane said. “You can’t not have friends.”

  The world Kane lived in must be nice. I wished I could visit it. A land where making friends isn’t a monumental effort, it’s something that just happens. I bet he would go to Paris and have a grand old time. He wouldn’t get to the top of the Eiffel Tower and see insects and suicide. He’d see world peace. To him the world was a lovely clear river and he was a fish. The world’s most handsome and lovely bloody fish. “She didn’t take her phone.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I can see it ringing in her room.”

  “She’s probably got more than one. Most girls do. Girls and drug dealers.”

  “Nothing in her room has moved. Kane,” I said, looking around to make sure no one was listening, “what’s ‘jumped out’?”

  Kane’s eyes widened. “Christ,” he said quietly, “why?”

  “It’s something she mentioned.”

  “Uh, Jake…” He started thumbing through his phone. “That’s really bad.”

  Sean lolloped over like a horse and crashed into our chairs. “What are you gays up to?” He watched Kane tap out a text message.

  “Shut up, Sean,” Kane mumbled. “That girl Jake knows is going to get jumped out.”

  “Bait,” Sean said.

  “Will you please tell me what jumped out is?”

  Kane and Sean exchanged infuriating glances as they decided whether I should be told this big huge secret. Finally Kane looked around and leaned close. His breath smelled of sugar. “‘Jumped in’ is joining a gang and ‘jumped out’ is leaving it. You literally get jumped out by the lot of them. Gang beating. To death a lot of the time. And if you’re a girl? It’s not good, Jake.”

  “Why would they want to jump her out?” I asked, rubbing my elbow that was on fire because I had leaned on it for all of two seconds.

  Sean laughed. “Uh, she looked at someone funny, she wore the wrong snap-back on a Saturday, she farted in the wrong octave… Take your pick, innit.”

  “If they just abandon you,” I said, “what’s the point in ever joining?”

  Kane said, “Most people do it by accident. You’re getting bullied, or you’re bored or skint, or whatever, and you blurt something stupid, then you’re in.”

  “You get presents, protection,” Sean said. “Someone to shave your tits on a Sunday, whatever.”

  Two serious examples and a joke. Sean knew how to time a laugh. Isaac and I were obsessed with working out the maths of comedy, the timing that was closer to music than it was to literature. Isaac said we had to learn how to play an instrument. Music, maths and comedy are all intertwined. I missed my brain being occupied with Mozart and Bill Hicks rather than violence and gang linguistics.

  “Well, how can we get to them?” I asked. “How can we talk to someone in her gang?”

  “They ain’t got a call centre, Jake,” Kane said. “You can’t go the comment section on their website.”

  “Yeah, you can’t comment on their website,” Sean said. “They ain’t got a website.”

  Kane rolled his eyes. “Shut up, Sean, will you?”

  “Maybe we could try and find someone who’s been jumped out. We can ask them and…”

  Kane became serious again. “It isn’t survivable. They might not kill you but…” He shook his head. He had Dad’s sentence disease, as if the words he needed didn’t exist. “Jake, don’t tell anyone I said this, but if you know she’s been threatened, why don’t you just go to the police?”

  I shifted. “And say what? ‘Oh, hi, this girl I barely know has gone missing. She may have done something massively illegal, but ignore that, can you help?’”

  “What about Social Services?” Kane said.

  “That bunch of meddling bastards?” I said. Bright flashes appeared when I blinked and remained when I opened my eyes. I shielded my face and shut my eyes until the flashing stopped.

  “Are you having a breakdown, Britney?” Sean said.

  “Girls’ names aren’t insulting,” I said.

  “What’s going on?” Clariss
a said as she joined us. The supply teacher was reading the newspaper while everyone went loudly about their business.

  I buried my face in my hands and heard Kane say, “Jake knows this girl who’s being jumped out.”

  There was a long pause. Clarissa didn’t say anything but I could feel her tense up.

  “I’m not being funny,” Sean said, “but I wouldn’t get involved with this if my life depended on it.”

  The bell sounded. We collected our stuff, without a glance towards the teacher, and poured out into the hall. I tried to shift the weight of my bag off the bone of my shoulder. Kane took it from me and carried it.

  “Make sure you don’t do nothing with her,” he said, “even if it seems innocent, like, you know, ‘Oh, let’s go down the shops, drop something off. Oh, let’s just go drop off a bit of redirected mail.’ Only thing getting redirected is your face … right up your arse.”

  “Yeah, be careful,” Clarissa said, as we waited our turn to trudge down the stairs. “Don’t get tricked into anything.” We filed into the empty science room. “Definitely don’t go anywhere with her,” she said, throwing her bag in the corner and taking a seat at the back. Kane and Sean joined her, defiantly keeping their coats on. The seats in science are higher than anywhere else and it put so much pressure on the bones of my arse, I could barely sit down.

  “Anywhere?” I said.

  “Jake?” Kane said. “You haven’t gone anywhere with her, have you?”

  “I might have…”

  “You might have what?” Kane said.

  “You’re getting done over, innit, Jake,” Sean laughed. “Played like a banjo.”

  Bash joined us. “This is still a kid we’re talking about,” he said, “and torturing someone who’s trying to get out of a gang is not uncommon.”

  “You think she’s being … tortured?” I said.

  “We need to get on the principal’s email,” Kane said, “use her ID to start asking round A&Es, police and Social.”

  “I can get myself sent to the principal,” Sean shrugged. “It’s a special skill.”

  “No,” Kane said, “we’re doing a lock-in tonight. Jake will bugger off like he always does and we’ll all meet in the Conference Centre when the bell rings, and hide out there until everyone goes.”

  “Well,” Bash said, “there go my election prospects.”

  His voice was so soft he made everyone giggle. He pocketed his notebook with a flourish and everyone giggled again.

  “I’d vote for you, Bash,” Clarissa said.

  “Bash, you nanked your election prospects day you was born, son.”

  “That ain’t true,” he said, looking at our squawking classmates, who were threatening each other with rolled-up textbooks. “This place is exactly like Eton. We have boxing, fencing, debate club…”

  “None of our parents work,” Sean said.

  “Speakforyourself!” we yelled at him.

  “And we all live on estates,” Clarissa said.

  “Good one,” I said, unable to think of a joke.

  “Yeah,” Bash laughed, “we all live on estates and none of us deserves to be here.”

  Kane threw his head back and laughed. It was as if the light came from him.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon in my cupboard, editing the Apple Pie scene. Isaac’s laugh played on a loop. I ate a cracker and three jelly squares. Jelly squares are quite grim but I didn’t mind eating them even if they were warm from my pockets. Baby birds eat them because they’re brightly coloured and they can use them as a marker for when they’re throwing up different meals. Vomit geology. Vomology.

  I stood up and wiggled around to get some blood to my toes. My trousers swam around the fall of my bum like a Southside rude-boy. I’d lost even more weight since the days Isaac’s dad used to call us twins, or piglets, and later … twiglets.

  Once, Ms Scabbard had called Isaac and me to the front of the class and made us stand face to face while she measured our combined waist size. She then measured the fattest kid in the class and announced that Isaac and I combined were thinner than Matt Manson. Matt’s face fell and the righteous kids banded in support of him.

  “Miss, it isn’t his fault he’s fat,” Katie said.

  “Miss, Matt’s really upset,” Amirah said.

  “How would you like it if we calculated our combined ages?” I said. “And compared them to yours, miss.”

  “Right, that’s enough—”

  “Or our combined number of friends?” Isaac said.

  “You be quiet, you—”

  “Or our combined number of … uh … parents who are still alive,” Shiloh said.

  Uh, too far there, mate. Misjudged.

  Ms Scabthroat inhaled the insult for a beat, her jaw hanging, then she lost it. And I mean lost it: yelling, sweating, spit spraying in all directions. She screamed so hard her ghost-white face bristled with purple veins. When she stopped screeching, she collapsed into a chair, glaring at us as if to decide whose head to rip off first. What followed was a silence so tense it could crack a mirror. She turned to the board and we all knew that whoever moved, squeaked, or sneezed next was finished.

  “You know when we stood together…” I whispered to Isaac.

  He scrunched his face and leaned away, knowing I would make him laugh, knowing that the next person to make a sound would split the atom and face the wrath of hell. But it was Isaac, and he couldn’t resist. He took a nervous gulp of water. “What?” he whispered.

  “Well,” I leaned closer to his ear. “When we stood face to face? And she put that tape measure round us? My … uh … my winky moved.”

  Isaac sprayed his water over his desk, splashing Rosie in front, destroying his maths book, scrambling to catch the gobby fluid that came out of his nose. The sight made me grab my stomach in laughter.

  Isaac howled and, scarlet and sweating, Ms Scabthroat screamed like a crazy pig: “Jones! Kaufman! Get OUT!”

  I wiped my face and realized I was crying. A sharp, stabbing pain ripped through my hollow stomach. Isaac wouldn’t believe I’d had so many fights. We’d never thrown or taken a punch between us.

  A tiny twiglet. Less than half the size of poor Matt Manson.

  I waited until the sounds of the school had faded away and then walked out into the dark corridor.

  When Kane walked into the conference room, I was so relieved I couldn’t speak.

  Bash, Clarissa and Sean appeared behind him.

  “Just so you know,” Sean said, “I am already starving.”

  We waited in the conference room until the lights switched off around the school. There was a walk-in stock cupboard that we checked would fit us all in when the caretaker did his final sweep of the school.

  Bootsteps approached and we tiptoed into the cupboard. It went dark and musty and Sean started to giggle. The door of the conference room was flung open. Sean clamped his mouth with two hands and we waited in silence as the footsteps entered the room. I could feel the others brace around me. The steps retreated.

  Ahooo, said my stomach.

  “Shut up, man,” Sean hissed.

  Ahoooooo?

  “Shut up, Jake.”

  “Shut up. Stop sayin’ shut up,” Clarissa said.

  The footsteps halted. Clarissa’s heart beat against my arm. It pounded so hard it moved her tiny body. Her fingers found mine. Her touch sent a sensation like a burn across my palm. She probably thought my hand was Kane’s.

  “What now?” Kane whispered.

  “Well, we can’t stay here for ever,” Bash said.

  “My cousin hid in a service cupboard at the O2 for two days to see Beyoncé,” Sean said, “but when he come out his eyes couldn’t adjust to the lights and he slammed into this security guard stinking of piss, so he got chucked out before the support act come on,
and he never saw nothing.”

  “Pikey bastard,” Kane whispered.

  “Oi, that’s my cousin.”

  “Ain’t he the one who got Community Service for eating a pigeon?” Bash whispered.

  “No, that was his brother. And it ain’t like he didn’t cook the pigeon.”

  “Oh, well, if he cooked it then that’s fine,” Bash said.

  The others giggled.

  “We might need to go full cannibal locked in ’ere,” Sean said.

  “You’ll be the first to go,” Bash said. “I’m not even waiting till I’m hungry. Just peckish.”

  “Tell you who I would eat,” Sean said. “Clarissa’s dad.”

  The boys laughed. Clarissa told them to shut up. I tensed. I hated being outside of in-jokes more than anything in the world.

  “Clarissa’s dad is really fit,” Kane said to me with a smile in his voice. “Drives her mad.” I wondered whether I would have told them if it was my in-joke. People would beg me to explain. I never did.

  “He’s better looking than most women. It’s a fact,” Sean said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Clarissa said in her soft voice. “I think that caretaker’s gone, you know. I think we’re all right.”

  “Tell you who is all right,” Sean said, “your fit dad.”

  “Shut up, Sean,” Clarissa said.

  “Oi, Lissa, stop touching me up,” he said.

  “That ain’t me,” Clarissa said and the others giggled again.

  “Stop touching me up. Ain’t like you’re Lissa’s dad.”

  A noise.

  We remained still and no one dared speak. As the silence became unbearable, a slow, rumbling fart clapped out of someone, like a car engine that wouldn’t start. If injustice had a smell, this would be it. Kane slapped his hand to his face. Clarissa raised her chin to the ceiling and tossed her head as if drowning. Bash gripped his face as if he’d been burned. Sean threw open the door.

  We gasped.

  “My eyes!” Clarissa said.