Fifteen Bones

by R. J. Morgan

  The lockers were cordoned off. I scanned the crowd penned into the assembly hall. The same people who usually got indignant about being told to put their leftovers in the bin were not objecting to this search.

  “What’s happening again?” Kane said.

  “What?” I woke up to myself.

  “You was just muttering to yourself, It’s happening again.”

  “Was I?”

  “You’re like my granddad after he swallowed them worming tablets and gave the dog his Alzheimer’s pills. Come on, old bean –” he put his arm around me “­— let’s go to English before you start clucking like a chicken.”

  In English, Miss Price gave in to the chatter and let us talk about Epiphanie. My head was screaming. It wasn’t just any headache, it was an M&S headache, where your head feels like it’s been split like a coconut and you’re amazed that your brain can hurt this much and you can still be alive. My stomach forwent the traditional rumbling, and was bullying my liver into sending shooting pains through my nervous system. I wished I didn’t know stomachs have neurons in them and can pick up signals, send signals, have feelings. “Butterflies” in the stomach isn’t your brain telling your stomach to react, it’s your stomach reacting by itself. The kneading tremors you get when you’re scared, or have just realized you’ve done something terrible, are the neurons in your stomach reacting. The stomach brain. The fingernails. I dug my fingers into my gut to confuse it.

  Ahoo.

  Ahoooo!

  Miss Price asked us all to write about a kid our age being shot in the street less than a mile away. She asked questions. Where was the girl from? When Raizer told her how Epiphanie had got shot for being in the wrong “territory”, she asked, “You’re talking about boroughs?”

  “Nah,” Raizer said, “I’m talking about ends.”

  “Ends?”

  “Yeah, that’s why Epiphanie was killed,” Raizer said. “She crossed a boundary. She shouldn’t have been there.”

  “At least you know her name,” Nickola said.

  Kane piped up. “Yeah, some fucking – sorry, miss – white kid – sorry, Jake – gets killed and it’s all headlines like ‘So-and-so Smith is slain’; a black or Asian kid gets stabbed and it’s like ‘Number 23 killed’. We’re like meat off a Chinese menu.”

  “None of us lot dead would make the news,” Bash said.

  “Ooooooooooooooh!”

  “Allow it!”

  “Evening Standard, maybe? Three hours over the lunch time,” Miss Price said with a grin.

  “Jake would,” someone said.

  “Nah!” someone said. “He’s been expelled. He’s too rough for people to care about.”

  Rough?

  “And he’s a boy,” someone said in agreement.

  I didn’t know which I’d prefer, to be on the Chinese menu or to make the news.

  “Yeah, but he is white.”

  “He is white. True.”

  “I ain’t white!” Isaac would wail as if he had never noticed. It would send everyone into fits of laughter. “Read the melanin, my friends,” he would say, before eventually looking shocked by his own arms. Finally, he would crane his neck, put his face to the ceiling and cry “Nooooooo!” and you had never heard such laughter.

  “This is all because the CRK elders and youngs are getting together on Friday to end their beef,” Raizer said.

  “This Friday?” Miss Price said. “Where?”

  Raizer shook his head, screaming with laughter. “You wouldn’t believe what goes on, miss!”

  “Say nuttin’, innit, Raizer. You snake,” the class said in chorus.

  “Has anyone threatened you?” Miss Price asked.

  “Not me, miss. It’s the wannabes you wanna worry about.”

  Miss Price shook her head. “You all deserve so much better than this.”

  There was a silence then the bell rang. Miss Price clapped her hands together. “Remember, at the end of term it’s…” She paused and raised her hands with excitement. “Pip-Pop Day!”

  The class groaned.

  “Come on, it’s everyone’s chance to express themselves. Remember there’s a top prize for the best poem or rap.”

  I felt dizzy as I stood up.

  At that moment, Ritchie Darscall darkened the door, and grinned.

  Darscall and his minions followed me down the heaving corridor. I took the twenty pounds I had leftover from Paris to pay him for my phone. I didn’t look him in the eye as I held out the money.

  “That was a one-time offer,” he said, snatching the note. “Holding price.”

  He lumbered closer. I put my hand to my head. My gluey hair was wet with sweat. Robin was right. You can’t pay the ransom and you can’t run away. “You’d better still have my gear,” he said.

  We reached my locker. I had no idea if the package was in there or not. I didn’t know how it could be. I nodded, giving myself a few safe seconds. Darscall and his minions twitched with anticipation.

  “Give it here then. Bait round here.”

  “Aren’t you worried they’ll check the lockers again?”

  “Are you talking?”

  My hands shook as I opened my locker and retrieved my rucksack. I unzipped it slowly and held my breath as I reached down and – I couldn’t believe it – the package was still there.

  He snatched it from me and weighed it in his hand.

  “Rich—” The word spilled out of my stupid mouth.

  “What did you say?” Darscall’s massive head did a sweep of the corridor. He needed attention.

  I swallowed. “Do you know anyone who’s being jumped out?”

  “What did you just say?” he laughed.

  “It’s just that … you’d have the most … street knowledge.”

  “Go on.” He swooped breath-close to my face. “Keep talking.”

  “Do you …” I sighed. The words wouldn’t form themselves. “ … jumped … out?”

  “What do you know about being jumped out, flower?” His finger prodded my forehead. “Something you’re not telling me?”

  “Ritchie, if someone is getting jumped out around here, where does it happen?”

  “Are you dumb?” Darscall said. His minions giggled.

  “None of you can laugh properly,” I could see flashing lights and I bent to slow the pain in my liver. “What God-awful lives do you have not be able to laugh properly?”

  Darscall stared at me open-mouthed.

  “Where does it happen?” I persisted. “Is it always in Wimbledon Park?”

  He turned to his minions. “Is he still talking?”

  Lights are the last warning. You’ve ignored your stomach, your liver, and here comes the brain with the eviction notice. I tasted metal. I saw my second birth. Fading brake lights. Blood with pieces in it. “Rich,” I said again, “if anything happens to her, you’ll have to deal with me.”

  Darscall’s eyed widened. He smiled maniacally. “I’ll let you have that one, treacle, because you look like you’re being swapped about, and I feel sorry for you boys, I really do.”

  “I mean it, Ritchie.”

  “Who’s asking?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m asking,” I said.

  He took a full lunge towards me and grabbed my collar. I couldn’t breathe. My shirt was bunched in his paw, forcing my arms out at right angles like a scarecrow.

  “Tourist,” Darscall said. “Village piece of shit.”

  He dragged me along the corridor and into the toilets, his minions scuttling excitedly behind us. He grabbed the back of my thin hair and shoved my face down into the rancid bowl, pulling and pulling the chain. The minions laughed. I panicked, retching and unable to breathe. I could feel Darscall ripping at my clothes and yanking my belt. My belt, so tight with its extra knot, tugged against my
stomach and withstood his attempts to get my trousers down. I remained dead still, struggling to breathe.

  “The Beast,” I said.

  It stopped.

  “What did you say?”

  “The Beast,” I coughed. “The Beast is asking.” I blinked within a sudden release. “If he ever finds out about this, you’re dead.”

  Darscall drew back. Reassessed me. “Who are you?”

  I felt a tingling sensation, like wings spreading across my back. “Yeah,” I said as I got to my feet, “you just made a big mistake. Fatal.”

  Darscall grunted to his minions and they all left. “You tell him that that skank will be all right as long as she shows up on Friday.”

  “I’m not passing on any messages for you.”

  He took the smallest step back. “Whatever,” he said in a smaller voice.

  “And I want my phone back.”

  He looked at me. “Fine,” he said. He slapped the phone into my hand.

  “And I’m not from some village,” I said as I straightened my shirt. “I’m from Brixton, so fuck off.”

  He scuttled off. I steadied myself, putting a hand to the wet wall. I felt sick and so lightheaded it took me right back to the top of the Eiffel Tower, looking down at all those bugs and that murderous taper, with a girl who barely left her own street.

  “Time’s up,” Robin had said.

  I inhaled.

  I knew where she was.

  Exhilaration lifted the burning weight from my matchstick legs. Rain pasted my clothes to my skin, but I didn’t care. I ran in through the door of the Death House, ignoring the gutted living room, the dust on the kitchen counter, the empty fridge. No one had been home. I raced upstairs. The chair was still under the hatch in my room. I climbed up and put my moon head through the ceiling, but I couldn’t lift myself any further. With the last of my strength, I took Kane’s phone out of my pocket and shone it into the attic.

  “Hello?” I said. “I’m alone.”

  I hung there like a budgerigar. “Hello?” I said.

  A pulse beat beneath the base of my skull. My joints protested and threatened to drop me.

  Silence.

  I felt like screaming. I was certain I’d solved the mystery. I tried to lift my pitiful weight into the attic. I tried again. My Kit-Kat arms burned and lost their grip, and I grimaced as the chair teetered beneath my feet. I dropped the phone and as I tried to catch it, the chair fell. My fingers shredded on the ancient floorboards as I scrabbled for a grip. I slipped and landed on my back in the middle of the room. The impact arrested my lungs and filled my eyes with dust.

  I didn’t dare move. I didn’t know where my phone had fallen. If I tried to move and found that I couldn’t, and if my phone was out of reach, I would surely rot here.

  A head appeared above me. “Jake?”

  “Jesus!” I yelled, and made her jump. She came into the light, her head bobbing down from the hatch. I was faint with relief. “Robin,” I said.

  “Oh, my life, Jake, what happened?”

  “I went for a walk.”

  “Where? A swamp?”

  “I think I’ve broken … all of my bones.”

  “You’re bleeding.”

  “Robin, it—”

  “Jesus, your skin is like…”

  “Robin.”

  “I got scared, didn’t I,” she said. “I had to hide out. Sorry I couldn’t tell you. If you got involved it would be so bad for you.”

  My heart broke for her, but I couldn’t feel it. The pain in my joints burned to the shin. I had so many things to say to her, but it all came out as, “Aaaaaaaaaaaa.”

  “Jake,” she said as she peered down through the hatch, her head hovering above mine, “are you dying?”

  “I don’t think so.” I scratched my scrawny neck and this hurt my neck and my fingers and my wrist and my elbow and my shoulder. “I’m just really unattractive.”

  Robin giggled nervously. “Where are your parents? You need to go St George’s, you know. I ain’t even lying.”

  I groaned.

  She couldn’t come down because there were no curtains, and I couldn’t raise myself up on my poor bones. So there we lay for quite a while, her face above mine, words exploding into black space.

  “Seriously, you need to phone your mum. You don’t look right.”

  “I don’t know where they are.”

  “How can you not know where they are?” Robin said.

  I squirmed on the floor. I didn’t know how she could possibly care. “They’re probably at my nan’s. She likes to see the baby.”

  “What baby?”

  “My baby sister.”

  “You’ve got a baby sister?”

  I nodded.

  Robin flicked away some braids. They fell in front of her face again and she flicked them away more forcefully so they flew around her neck and hit her face from the other side. I realized it was Robin who had been eating the crackers and cereal, which meant that Mum hadn’t been back at all.

  Robin looked at me. “I ain’t never heard no crying.”

  “What crying?”

  “The baby. I ain’t ever heard no crying.”

  “No,” I said, “she’s a good baby. Reboot.”

  “What?”

  “They reboot… They rebooted me.”

  Robin shook her head. “You look like the last chicken in Lidl.”

  I laughed as much as my chest would allow.

  “You’re going to have to find something to cover that window,” Robin said.

  I nodded.

  “Get some food while you’re at it, I’m ’ank.”

  I took my time peeling myself off the carpet. Down in the kitchen, I searched slowly, then frantically, for food. In the fridge everything except the jam was irretrievably out of date. The skyline of condiments and pickles was useless. The yoghurt had gone to water and the chicken was reanimated with mould. Maybe I could search my parents’ room for some loose change to buy food from the corner shop, but I remembered immediately what I had said to Darscall. It was too dangerous to go outside. I felt a rush of anger: this is what house arrest feels like.

  I picked up a nail gun that was lying on the newly exposed floorboards and struggled back upstairs. I fetched a sheet from Mother’s cupboard, went back to my bedroom and tried to position it over the huge window.

  “Careful,” Robin said from the hatch.

  “It’s only a nail gun,” I said.

  I held the sheet in place and pressed the nail gun against the wall. I counted to three and fired. The force of the nail shooting out the gun rocketed up my arm and knocked me backwards.

  “Jesus!” Robin yelled.

  I hit the floor and the gun fired a nail straight through the window. In my panic, I fired the gun again. The nail hit the wall at an angle and shot back at me, missing my face by a breath. “Aaaa!” I cried as the sheet fell, bringing a gob of wall down with it.

  “Watch your head,” Robin cried. “Watch your stupid massive head!”

  I looked at the small hole in the window. I tested the glass. It felt like the strange wobble when you get out of the bath. “Another job well done.”

  Robin laughed. “Try hanging the sheet from the jagged bits. And where’s the food?”

  “There is no food,” I said quietly.

  Robin jumped from the hatch without breaking her legs. “Man, am I hungry. Have you really got no food? Like, none at all? I’m Starvin’ Marvin.”

  I shook my head, mortified.

  “I just have to lay low for a few days, until all this blows over, and then I’ll be all right. My people will take care of me. The school sent this text looking for me so they’re all off my back. Everyone is too scared to be seen with me. I know my mum wouldn’t have sorted that. One of my b
redrin would have seen me right. Now it’s just the Beast I have to worry about. I know you think they’re a bunch of criminals but—”

  “I sent that text,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Me and a few others broke into the school and called the police, and the A&Es, and Social Services, then we used their system to text every parent and child in the borough, and I read every single text that came back and fielded every phone call. I walked all over Wimbledon, Tooting, Earlsfield … I went to St George’s twice. I went to the Brackley Estate, checked all your contacts, tried everything I could think of … which is not much.” I yawned. “But I tried.”

  Robin sank to the floor. “Why?”

  “I was worried about you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because.”

  “But I was so horrible to you.”

  “You had your reasons.”

  “But why would you put yourself in that situation? For me?”

  “Because … chicken!” I said triumphantly. I dug around in my bag and held up Kane’s plastic box like that monkey holding up Simba. The light shone through the dark golden sauce. “Circle of life!” I sang.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Robin sat up like a meerkat.

  “Jerk chicken.”

  “Jeeeeeeeeeezan!” Robin said. She stuck her fingers into the box and her words became slow and heavy with pleasure.

  “Does ‘Jeezan’ mean chicken?”

  “Nah, it means, like … ‘look’.”

  “Oh. What’s chicken?”

  “Chicken.” She laughed, struggling to keep the food in her mouth. “Gimme the hot sauce. You can’t handle the sauce!”

  “Oop, racist,” I said, gladly handing it over. Even pepper gives me palpitations.

  When something pressed against my teeth, I realized I had put the edge of my thumb to my mouth to catch the paste. The paste was on my thumb and had oil that could easily have been put onto a napkin. I thought quite highly of myself for doing this and licked my thumb again.