Fifteen Bones
Page 24
“Ha!” I said, then shook my head. “Probably just adrenaline.”
“Yeah, adrenaline,” she said. She looked at the ground and smiled, biting the corner of her mouth to hide it.
The Cyclops glare of the helicopter circled on the lower road. We heard the roar of police cars in the distance. We scaled the fence and ran down the long street. I didn’t feel anything but hunger. I wasn’t worried about the darkness. I smiled for the briefest second before I saw Robin’s face thinning with horror. The Toad House bubbled with fire.
The police were waiting at the Toad House. Gloved forensic officers carried out boxes and firefighters surveyed the wreckage.
A police officer wandered over. “Do you live here?” she asked, pointing at the blackened Toad House.
Robin shook her head.
“Are they all right?” I said. “I live next door.”
“No one was hurt.” The officer gave us a quick up-and-down. “You kids all right?”
“Yeah,” Robin said. “Dandy.”
“You bin for a swim?”
“Water fight,” I said. “It got pretty Eighties.”
She laughed because people born in the Eighties like it when you talk about the Eighties.
She was joined by a male colleague. “You live next door?” he said, gesturing to my house.
I nodded and kept my hand on Robin’s shoulder.
Robin and I went upstairs and took turns in the shower. I made Robin go first because I didn’t want her to find any clumps of hair.
When I came out of the shower, she was wearing one of my school shirts. “Better not get hit by a bus wearing this hot mess,” she said. She pulled up the shirt to reveal my purple boxers.
She picked up a pair of scissors from my desk and began to cut her braids out of her hair. The fluffy hair underneath sprang up with relief. She scratched her head, her shoulders raised to her ears with the pleasure of it.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
“They won’t be able to hold him. They won’t have enough evidence.”
“What are we going to do?”
Robin turned to me. “There is one last bit of evidence,” she said.
“What’s that?” I said. “Anything, anything.”
She turned to me and lightly tapped the side of her head.
I blinked at her while my flaccid brain computed what she was saying. “You can’t give evidence. You’d have to incriminate yourself.”
“It’s the only way,” she said. “They’ll need a witness and I’ve seen everything.”
The light behind her picked up the fine hairs on the back of her neck. She looked like she was glowing. I wanted to beg her to not go through with it, but she looked calm, and determined, like the statues in the Louvre.
She took a red rubber band from her wrist and fixed it on to mine. “So you can find me,” she said.
I smiled.
“Also, I’ll text you,” she said and I laughed.
She looked at my desk and noticed the picture Mum had given me. She picked up the nail gun and fired a nail into the wall next to the window. The reverberation didn’t send her sprawling backwards on to the floor.
She hung the picture. “It looks good there,” she said. I nodded. She reached for my phone and took a picture of herself, then tapped in a number.
Then she put an arm around me and took a picture of both of us.
“You’re the bravest person I know,” I said.
“I’m the only person you know.” She put her arms around me and I put my arms around her.
“Gross,” I said, and we laughed and broke away.
I sat on the stairs while Robin talked to the police officer in the kitchen.
I took out my phone and looked at Robin’s picture. I liked her with her hair short. I saved the picture as my screensaver. I flicked to the picture I had taken of Kane and saved it under his number. I scrolled through my new contacts: Robin, Kane, Clarissa, Bash, Sean.
I scrolled back to Isaac’s number.
I pressed the menu button.
And then I pressed delete.
I exhaled. I hadn’t realized I had been holding my breath. “Goodbye, Isaac,” I said. “I miss you.”
I looked in amazement at the screen. Kind Dr Kahn’s number appeared where Isaac’s had been. His final gift. Nothing could have been clearer. I had to text her:
Dogs express grief with starvation. I was grieving. I was trying to tell them but they wouldn’t listen. I understand what you were saying now. Please help me. I want to live.
She texted back immediately:
You are wise. Come back.
I walked outside to get some air. Robin came out and sat beside me on the scrappy patch of grass. “They said I got five minutes.”
We looked back at the officers milling about the house. I looked at the ground.
“Robin,” I said, my eyes wide. “Robin, what did you do? To Bettina’s?”
Robin shrugged with one shoulder.
“Transmitters?” I said. “Firecrackers on steroids, more like.”
The police officer came outside and handed me a cup of black tea. “I couldn’t find much in the way of food there,” she said. She turned to Robin. “Are you ready?” Robin nodded.
We were surrounded by detectives and sergeants in their black suits. “Keep that safe,” Robin said, handing me the spider broach.
“No, you can have it.”
“But he left it for you.”
I took the dumb-looking spider and smiled. I liked that it now reminded me of Robin and of my being capable of loving someone unconditionally. As Robin was handcuffed I pinned it to her collar. “It’s for you.”
“You won’t be able to take that,” the detective said. “You should leave anything that expensive safely at home, unless you want it processed.”
“Expensive?” I said.
“Expensive?” Robin said. “It’s a stone and a few crystals and bits of plastic.”
“That’s plastic and those are crystals but that isn’t a stone.” The detective took a closer look and almost cracked a smile. “That’s a raw diamond.”
Robin and I looked at each other. She beamed. “You gave it to me, remember!”
She laughed as she climbed into the back seat of the police car. “I’m coming to live up the road with you in Edinburgh.”
The spider weighed on my hand. I looked up just in time to watch the car disappear down the long road. Autumn leaves danced at its wheels. I looked at the spider’s legs painstakingly glued to its little body. The next time I wanted to die I would remember being underwater, and I would remember that I had fought and fought to survive, and that’s when I called Doctor Kahn, and told her I was on my way.
To Genevieve Carden, my brilliant agent and personal Springsteen: a grand total of seventeen lines made it, intact, from first to final draft so I should thank you, and Scholastic, for your patience and expertise. Thanks especially to Genevieve Herr and Alice Swan for believing in me and getting me out of the habit of using ellipses and saying everything twice … twice, I tell you!
To my mum, Lesley, and my sister, Danielle, for not saying things like “get a proper job” and instead saying things like “why don’t you just eat the whole packet?”
To Laura Gilmore, for general Julia Robertsness, and for saving me from living in that garage with all the lovely slugs.
To the Longhorns: Sarah Solidum, Kawika Solidum, Annie Chan, and Robb MacDonald. To Sarah Wilshaw, Eoin “what do you know about any of this?” Meade, Michael Graham, Felicity Jones, and the wonderful Mark Strathdene. And finally to the humans born in the time it has taken me to write this: Anna, Sidney, Lennie, and Noa. May you live long, prosper, and one day do battle for my estate.
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First published in the UK by Scholastic Ltd, 2014
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