Fifteen Bones

by R. J. Morgan

  “Why is Robin’s number in your phone, Kane?”

  Kane rolled his shoulders. He looked warily round the room. “You don’t know how much you don’t know.”

  “Where is she? I swear I’ll kill you.”

  Kane laughed. “Have you ever had a death threat?”

  “Of course I have.”

  “I mean … a real one?”

  “Yes.”

  “One you actually believed?”

  “Yes.”

  “So do you think I believe you?”

  I relented. He pushed me backwards. His hand slipped under the zip of my hoodie and pressed on my shirt.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  He recoiled. “Are you all right? You’re so thin.”

  “Why don’t you mind your fucking business,” I said, straightening my shirt.

  “Kwame?” A slim, elegant lady in a grey niqab rushed in and said something in soothing Arabic. Her hands were worn and strong, wrung together as if praying. Kane spoke softly and guided her away without touching her, his face comfortably close to hers, their eyes locked. She gave me a wide-eyed look, the desperation framed by her grey head scarf. When she had left the room, I took my hood down and drew the collar up to my chin.

  “Jake, listen to me, you cannot get involved in any of this.”

  “Give me names,” I said. “Give me names and addresses.”

  Kane laughed with exasperation.

  “Give me the names of everyone in that stupid gang. Give me the name of someone who’s been jumped out.”

  “Jesus.” Kane spoke in a hiss. “I joined when I was ten. Ten. You know why? Because Tox gave me a pair of trainers. And that’s it.” He levelled his eyes with mine. “No one has seen her. They’re looking for her, but no one has seen her, all right? Because of the text they’re afraid to be seen with her; they think the police are watching for her too. And you did that. So that’s good. Because you should hear the way they talk about her. You should see it…”

  He scrolled through his text messages

  Snake…

  Skank…

  Nanks…

  Shanks…

  Clapped … clapped … clapped … clap her.

  I put my hands to my knees. A slow, rolling pain came from the depths of my stomach.

  “Jake,” Kane said, “stop cryin’.”

  I wasn’t crying. The pain was like waves breaking. I shuddered and stood up. “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know, mate, I swear to you. God, will you stop it, Jake. You’ve gone ghost-white.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He put his hands to my shoulders and it burned right to the bone. I shrugged him off.

  “You have to let this go. She’s gone and she doesn’t want to be found, you get me? If you find her, they could find her. You have to let this go.”

  A pain sharked through my stomach, sending me to my knees. This kind of pain is from the liver. The bailiff of hunger pains. The liver, and its tree of nerve endings, sends a blast of pain that can knock you out.

  I saw black, bent double and howled.

  “Oh, my life,” Kane said.

  “I will scream,” I said. “I’ll scream this entire place down if you don’t tell me where she is.”

  “Jesus, you’ve got to go hospital, fam, you look like you’re about to pass out.”

  I went to the window and tried to open it. I hit the lock with the side of my hand and it opened. Kane finally panicked.

  “Jake, don’t!” He easily prised my hand away from the window and closed it. “There’ a big deal going down. Every member of the CRK is gunna be there. That’s where she’ll be.”

  “Where is this happening?”

  “Where do you think?”

  “At school?”

  “At school.”

  The bailiff shuffled testily around the pulp of my stomach, giving me a few minutes’ reprieve. I scrambled up like the evolution of man, and headed for the door.

  Kane blocked me. “You can’t just walk out of here,” he said.

  I surged forward and made it out of his claustrophobic bedroom. I didn’t care about Kane or the estate outside. Nothing in the world was happening except this brutal pain in my liver.

  Kane blocked me at the front door and looked out across the estate. He narrowed his eyes and followed any movement within the dark mouth.

  “Jake, it’s dark and it’s … you can stay here if you want.”

  I shook my head.

  “At least take this.” He looked through coats on the rack and fished out a grey hoodie. I looked at it sleepily before taking it from his hand. I said nothing as I walked out of the flat.

  By the time I reached the stairs, I had to sit and press my stomach, to stem the agony. The last time I had been bent double like this Robin had run to get me an inhaler. The thought made me miss her even more.

  I dragged myself up. Movement helped the pain and shrunk my mind to a pinpoint, one step in front of the next. I blocked out the wide spaces in which children were playing in the dark. They spotted me and sped over, circling me on their scooters. I pulled up my hood and they drifted off. It was like having a superpower. It made me feel so good I was able to keep walking.

  I left the estate unscathed and walked up and down the roads that fringed the park. I checked out the leads people had texted: a sighting at a corner shop near Wimbledon Park Station, another at the corner of South Park, heading towards the bustle of Haydon’s Road. I walked until a fiery pain ignited in my ankles.

  I thought of the time when Isaac’s parents had bought us scooters and I had played on mine until I felt faint. Isaac’s mum said it was all right to play all day but I had to stop to eat and drink. She told me once you’re thirsty it’s too late, and she gave me purple squash to drink through a swirly straw. I really liked that straw.

  I got Robin’s picture up on my phone and, as I walked towards Collier’s Wood, I asked everyone I passed if they had seen her. No one had. After a while I asked every other person, then soon I didn’t ask anyone. I walked to Tooting and went into St George’s Hospital to see if she was there. A nurse told me, no, there were no unidentified youngsters. She smiled and I lingered at the desk. She asked me what happened to my arm; she asked me when was the last time I ate something, and I left.

  I walked towards Alexandra on the road that cuts through the graveyard. I reached the police station. I told the large policeman behind the desk that I had a friend who was missing and what should I do. He said friend as if it was some big question. “Are you missing?” he asked me. He said it very carefully. I looked at him with my arms raised and my palms turned to the ceiling. “I’m not missing,” I go. “I’m standing right here.” The policeman goes, “Yes.” He said he couldn’t search a house without a warrant or the owners’ permission, and I told him good luck getting that, and he goes, “Tell you what, I’ll go round and have a word if you like,” and I said, “Thanks but no thanks,” and I walked off. He asked if there was something I wanted to tell him and I said, “No.” “You want a lift anywhere?” I said, “No” but he was still behind me and he said, “People have to want help,” and I said, “All right,” and kept walking.

  When I reached the Death House, the clouds filtered sunlight into grey and rotten apples had fallen to the wintry mud. I felt I was watching myself in a film, standing in the cold, unable to open the door. I thought about how miserable I looked, and then I wasn’t really sure why I was doing it, so I went inside.

  Sickness bloomed in my stomach. My liver must be fat with toxins. Liver bailiff is a hell of a stage to get to. I went straight to the fridge, empty except for corned beef, which I taunted my stomach with before I rained my fists down on the countertop.

  The big time marker for a missing child is four ho
urs.

  After four hours, the chances of finding a missing child roughly halve.

  The chance of finding a missing child decreases at a steady pace as each hour passes.

  The chances of finding a missing child after 72 hours are minimal.

  Robin had been gone for four days.

  The next morning it took me for ever to find the front door key. I was trapped in the stupid house and steaming by the time I found it, wedged behind a stack of old newspapers. I looked around for signs of Mother. Some cereal had gone, so she must have been back at some point. I hesitated by the door, and left.

  I reached Cattle Rise with highway blindness. I couldn’t remember walking there. There was a hollow, nervous feeling in my chest. I came out of registration with my head down and waited for the crush in the corridors to die down before going to look for Kane.

  “Gay,” someone said as they passed me.

  “Not an insult,” I said.

  Darscall thundered towards me and grabbed me by my collar. “Holding price, just gone up,” he grunted and shoved me against the wall before stomping off. “Thanks a lot,” I said.

  The loudspeaker announced an emergency assembly. I imagined we were going to get the Riot Act read to us because of last night but as we shuffled to assembly the air became alive with talk of a shooting.

  A teenager had been shot dead three streets from the school. Kids relayed the story over and over, with warring theories and competitive knowledge about gangs, drugs, weapons and teenage suspects.

  “It was a girl,” someone said.

  “A girl.”

  “A girl.”

  I scratched at my neck to get a grip of my collar, but realized the top button of my shirt was already undone. Once, Mother had been away on a build and I had eaten nothing but jelly squares for three days. I was in the bath and I had left the hot tap on. I liked how the water made red sleeves on my arms. When I got out of the bath, all the water in my body made a wave from my feet to my head, and fell like a rollercoaster. I fainted and crashed back into the bath. When I woke up, I was underwater. I panicked and took in a lungful of boiling water. I kicked and plunged my head deeper into the bath until a great surge bolted up my spine and sprung me upright. And that was how I felt in that moment, like waking up underwater.

  My ears popped. “Who was she?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Black? White?”

  “Black,” Clarissa said, shaking her head.

  “What’s her name, do we know?”

  People turned to tell me to shut up, but when they saw my face they went back to their phones and to see if any of the papers had named her. They searched, texted, refreshed web pages until her name was released: Epiphanie Emery.

  It was a morbid relief. A crash of emotion is not good when you haven’t eaten. Your signals go haywire.

  Clarissa checked around her and used her thumb to wipe a tear from the sallow dip of my cheek. Quickly, surreptitiously, she ran her fingers down the side of my face. I opened my mouth to speak but she hurried off.

  “Epiphanie,” Sean said, “I found her Facebook page.”

  I held my breath before I looked at it. It was another pretty girl with a face full of lipgloss giving attitude to her webcam.

  “How they spelling ‘Epiphanie’?” Bash asked, his arms firmly crossed.

  “With an ‘h’,” Sean said.

  “She won’t make the news then,” Bash said.

  Sean looked sadly at his phone. “Weird to think yesterday she updated her status, and now she’s dead.”

  “What was it?” I asked.

  “Nandos is siiiick,” Sean said. “Got seventy-four likes. Seventy-four! I haven’t met seventy-four people. Not much of a what-you-call-it…”

  “Epitaph,” I said.

  “Epitap. God keep her.” He shook his head. “Her whole life is on here, there’s four thousand pictures. Isn’t it so weird? I’m looking at her Facebook page, and she’s dead.”

  “There are twenty million dead people on Facebook,” I said.

  “How do you know that?” Sean stopped. “Why do you know that?”

  I shrugged.

  The meaty corridor felt even smaller. All us dirty-haired kids had things to do, places to be, people to talk to. I needed to get the hell out of there and find Robin. We needed reassurance, we needed to see our friends, we needed to know the story of this girl’s death and what it meant.

  I broke from the crowd and went into the toilets. My phone was filled with hundreds of texts that read, “Hope you find her”, “God bless”, “Will keep a lookout, hope she is OK”, but nothing about where she was. A wave of texts said they hoped she wasn’t the girl on the news.

  I emerged from the toilet and was swept back into the crowd. “Hall,” barked a teacher.

  “We’re going to get our arses handed to us,” Kane said, appearing at my side.

  I ignored him.

  “I’m not friends with Robin or anything,” Kane said. “I don’t know her.”

  I turned away.

  A police officer approached us and looked so severe that we shuffled out of his way.

  Kane looked around, his flawless face agitated for the first time since I had met him. “This is about that girl. They’re looking for something.”

  I wanted to ask him what he was thinking, but I didn’t trust my voice.

  As we were herded into the hall, Kane’s hard body pressed against mine. In the scrum I no choice but to sit next to him. “Sniffer dogs. They’re keeping us all in here so they can search our lockers.”

  I turned in horror. I’d forgotten the package Darscall had made me keep in my locker. “They can’t do that!”

  “Yes they can.”

  “They can’t! There’s … pro … pre…” I couldn’t think of the word. “Rules.”

  “No, there ain’t.” Kane fussed with his rucksack. “This is for you,” he said, pressing something into my hand. “Put it in your bag, quick.”

  I braced. This was all I needed. Another banger making me hold something for them, so I’m the one getting felt up at the Detention Centre. I looked down at a plastic box he had handed me. It was filled with crispy brown chicken and golden sauce.

  “What’s this?”

  “Jerk chicken,” Kane said, “my dad makes it. It’s the best thing in life.”

  I looked at it in horror.

  “Put it in your bag,” Kane said, checking around him.

  “Has it got drugs in it?”

  Kane turned slowly, his face long with shock, his voice low. “That … is … some … old-school racist shit right there. I thought you just looked hungry, that’s all.”

  “I am not racist.” I shoved the box of food across his legs and back into his bag. “And I am not a charity case.”

  “Who said you were?” Kane blocked my hand. “Just so you’re not eating Twizzlers or whatever you people eat.” He put the food in my bag.

  “You people?” I muttered, remembering Isaac’s joke. “I’m not white,” he would wail, and everyone would laugh.

  Out in the corridor I could see two police officers making their way down the row of lockers. Mine was located at the very end of the row. “We have rights, don’t we?” I hissed. “What’s the … how does it go? My something something’s locked, so’s the boot in the back, and I know my rights so you’ll need a lawyer for that—”

  “Please, stop.” Kane put his hands to his face.

  “Aren’t you a shark and attack I know—”

  “If you keep rapping, I’ll kill myself.”

  “So you’ll need a warrant for that.” I clicked my fingers, which hurt quite a lot. “They’ll need a warrant.”

  “Yes. That’s exactly what Jay Z said: ‘One knows one’s rights so I’m afraid you’ll need a warr
ant for that, old chap’.” Kane coughed back a laugh.

  The officers and their sniffer dogs made their way down the row of lockers, opening and slamming them, one by one, edging ever closer to mine. “Hep, hop, ho,” the tall officer said to his Alsatian. The dog looked like an absolute bastard. Its tongue hung from its gaping mouth and was the size of a basketball shoe. It confidently dispatched of each locker and the officers moved on to the next, and the next. If you think sniffer dogs can’t find pills, you’re mad. Sniffer dogs can find pill residue on clothing that has been washed. My stomach became water. A heat spread from my chest down my Kit-Kat arms. I rubbed my scars.

  “But they need a reason? A warrant?” I said desperately.

  “That’s in America,” Kane said as he followed the progress of the officers. “This is here. You don’t think they can search your locker and throw you in jail? You can go to jail for writing something on Twitter.” He turned to me and his face dropped. “Why are you so worried anyway? What have you … no. No. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

  I looked at him sideways.

  “I hope you like carrots, fam, ’cos that’s all they’ve got down the Detention Centre.”

  “Don’t joke.” My head swum.

  “You all right?” Kane said. “You’ve gone ghost.”

  I felt faint as the officer and his beast of an Alsatian opened the locker next to mine. I prayed for a miracle. Perhaps they would find what they were looking for in the pink gym bag the Alsatian was getting his snout around.

  The gym bag was replaced and the locker was closed. Mine was next.

  I held my breath as the key went into the lock. The policeman pulled out my rucksack, looked inside, replaced it, and shut the locker without a second’s thought. He moved on to the next row.

  “You coming to English?” Kane said.

  I could feel my heart beating in my ears.

  “You coming to English? Jake?”

  I blinked, looked into his brown eyes. “What happened?”

  “When?” Kane said.

  Everything was wavy. Maybe Darscall knew we were getting searched today. But why would he bother saving me? Maybe he didn’t want his drugs taken as evidence and destroyed. Maybe it was Robin who had taken the package. Maybe it was in there but wasn’t what the police were looking for. I needed to check.