Drive By

by Jim Carrington

  We’re on our way back from training now, about to walk past the row of shops where the drive-by took place and we’re both quiet. We both have our heads down as we walk as though we’re thinking about something deep. I wonder whether Jake’s thinking the same as me.

  ‘It gives me the creeps,’ he says quietly as we get close.

  ‘What does?’

  ‘Going past here every day.’

  I look up at Jake. He’s not looking back at me. He’s looking at the space on the road outside the shop where the car was parked that day.

  ‘Me too.’

  And that’s it. Neither of us says any more and when we get to the top of his road, we go in our different directions.

  I cross Exminster Avenue so I don’t have to walk on the side where the Poisoned Dwarf lived, but I glance up at the house as I get close. The car’s parked out front. The blinds are all pulled shut. I don’t see anyone. Still, my heart thumps and I remember the dream from last night. I hurry along the road.

  Badger’s already sitting on the front step, reading a comic book, when I get home. He looks up as I walk up the drive.

  ‘Wanna come in and get some lunch?’ I say, putting my key in the lock.

  Badger nods and gets up from the step. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Food would be good.’

  Mikey’s there as soon as we get in through the door. He’s in the hallway with his friend Asif, as though they’re just about to go upstairs. They stop and look at me and Badger. I think about stirring after the text I sent from Mikey’s phone the other day. But before I can, Mikey speaks.

  ‘Is that your stupid balloon in the lounge?’ he says.

  ‘Uh?’

  ‘The lame pirate balloon. Is it yours?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘Well, maybe you can put it in your room. It’s been getting in my way all morning,’ he says, and then he turns and walks up the stairs with his little friend.

  I shrug my shoulders at Badger and go through to the kitchen to get us some sandwiches and crisps and stuff.

  A few minutes later we’re sitting upstairs in my room, eating.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep last night,’ Badger says between bites of a sandwich. He looks at me.

  I get a strange feeling – relief, I think. Someone else might actually be going through what I am. Maybe I’m not going loopy. Maybe this is normal. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I was just thinking about . . .’ He tails off.

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘So do you know any more about what happened?’

  I shake my head. ‘Only what I said yesterday. She had a heart attack after we did the drive-by. According to the newspaper she had a heart problem even before we did that. She went into hospital and came out a couple of days later.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  I nod. ‘I saw her getting back home. She looked awful. She looked like she was pretty much dead already.’

  Badger lets out a long, slow breath.

  ‘And then she died. I don’t know exactly when, but I guess it must have been about a week ago cos the funeral was on Tuesday. That’s it. I don’t know for sure what she died of.’

  Badger sighs. ‘It doesn’t take a genius to work it out though, does it?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I feel so bad,’ Badger says.

  Neither of us speaks. We’ve both stopped eating. We sit and stare into nothingness for ages.

  ‘Is it murder?’ Badger says eventually.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. I pause. ‘Feels like it though.’

  ‘Jesus, man. Maybe we should tell someone.’

  ‘Like who?’

  Badger shrugs. ‘I dunno. The police?’

  I shake my head. ‘Why would we do that?’

  He shrugs again. ‘I don’t know. I just thought maybe we should. I mean, it’s not like we meant to give her a heart attack, is it?’

  I shake my head. ‘No. I think we should stay quiet. The police haven’t come knocking at our doors, have they? And they would have done if they’d known what we’d done. They know she got shot at on the parade of shops cos it was in the paper. If they knew it was us, they would have found us by now. Besides, the only witness is dead.’

  I feel really awful for saying it. It seems like a sick thing to say, like I am a murderer. But it’s true. She can’t identify us if she’s dead. And if she can’t, then no one can.

  Badger stands up. He walks over to the window and looks out. ‘How do we know she was the only person that saw us? And how do we know that she didn’t tell anyone?’

  ‘We don’t,’ I say.

  He nods. He comes and sits back down.

  ‘I did think of one thing though,’ I say.

  Badger stares at me. ‘What?’

  ‘CCTV cameras. There might be some on the parade of shops. They might have recorded what happened.’

  ‘Good point,’ he says. ‘We should go and check.’

  Summer

  The shopkeeper looks at me like he recognises my face but can’t place it. He always does when I go in there. I know who he is though. Afsheen. When I was little and Nan or Grandad used to bring me and Sky in here, the shopkeeper would always reach under the counter and get us a lolly when we went up to the till. He’d always say, ‘Sky and Summer. Such beautiful names for such beautiful girls.’ After a couple of seconds Afsheen gives up trying to work out who I am though and looks at the newspaper and bread and milk on the counter. He scans them all through.

  ‘Three pounds eighty-seven,’ he says.

  I hand him four quid, get my change and then leave the shop.

  As soon as I’m outside, I see him. Johnny. He’s standing around with another kid – a tall, black kid who has a white stripe in his bushy Afro. They’re looking around at the front of the shops and at the parking spaces and stuff. God knows what they’re doing. They turn in my direction. I smile at Johnny. He notices me and smiles back so I walk over to him.

  ‘Hello, Johnny,’ I say. ‘We must stop meeting like this.’

  He smiles, but then looks down at the pavement. ‘Hi, Summer,’ he says. He looks back up at me. ‘Oh, sorry. Summer, this is my friend, Badger. Badger, this is Summer.’

  ‘Badger,’ I say. ‘Cool name. Your parents must have been even bigger hippies than mine.’

  He laughs and runs his hand through his hair, right across his white stripe. ‘It’s not my real name unfortunately,’ he says. He’s even shyer than Johnny – he barely even looks at my face as he talks. ‘But you probably worked that out, didn’t you?’

  I smile. ‘What are you two doing, then?’

  They immediately look at each other and I get a weird vibe off them, like I’ve just walked in on something I shouldn’t have. They exchange this strange, wordless look.

  ‘Nothing,’ Johnny says. ‘Just hanging out really.’

  I don’t know whether he’s telling me the truth or not. Somehow I get the feeling he’s making something up. But what does it matter?

  ‘How about you?’ he says.

  I hold up the blue carrier bag. ‘Running errands again. I told you my life was rock and roll.’

  No one says anything for a while. In the background I can hear clanking sounds from the building site across the road.

  ‘You still up for meeting tomorrow?’ Johnny asks.

  ‘Course. You?’

  He nods and smiles. ‘Definitely.’

  There’s another silence for a couple of seconds and then he turns to look at Badger and back at me.

  ‘Better get going,’ he says. ‘See you tomorrow.’

  Johnny

  We’re back at my house, in my room, door closed. I’m sitting on the edge of my bed and Badger is on my desk chair.

  ‘There weren’t any cameras on the parade of shops as far as I could see,’ I say.

  Badger shakes his head. ‘Nope.’

  ‘But there’s one in the newsagent’s.’

  Badger nods. ‘The camera’s inside
the shop though. With all the stickers and posters and stuff on the newsagent’s door, there’s no way it’s gonna pick up what’s happening outside on the pavement. Besides, those places record over the CCTV tapes every couple of days.’

  ‘So I s’pose we’re in the clear, then,’ I say. It doesn’t come out sounding very triumphant. More apologetic. I feel rubbish for saying it, for even thinking it.

  ‘Looks like it.’ Badger pauses for ages. ‘There is one thing though.’

  I look at him. He puts his hand through his hair.

  ‘The building site,’ he says. ‘There are people on it all the time, going in and out. There are builders working up on the scaffolding. There’s a security guard on duty as well. And they’re right across the street from where it happened.’

  I take a deep breath and slowly blow it out. ‘Jesus,’ I say. ‘You’re right. I didn’t even think of that.’

  ‘I dunno if they’d have seen anything,’ he says. ‘It is a busy road . . .’

  ‘Do you reckon anyone did?’

  ‘I don’t know. Probably not. There would have been so much noise and too much going on for anyone to have noticed a couple of kids on bikes.’ Then he pauses. He looks down at the floor. ‘We can’t be sure though, can we?’

  ‘If anyone saw anything they’d have told the police by now, wouldn’t they?’

  Badger shrugs. Then he nods his head. ‘Yeah.’

  We sit in silence again. I hear all the usual noises – the drone of the main road and the rumble of the trains, sirens in the background – but I hear something else too, coming from the other side of my bedroom door. It’s quiet, but unless I really am going mad, I’m sure it’s laughter. I get up from my bed and walk over to the door. I open it and there, crouching down with stupid grins on their ugly little faces, are Mikey and Asif.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I shout. I stand over them and anger wells up inside me. I have to stop myself from hitting out at them. The implications of them sitting out there while me and Badger have been talking start to stack up in my mind. I feel my face start to flush. I try to work out what I’m gonna do, how to react.

  Mikey and Asif look at each other as though they’re not sure how to react either. They start off looking scared, but in a millisecond their expressions turn to amusement and they start laughing and run downstairs.

  I turn back to Badger.

  He shakes his head like he can’t believe this is happening and then he closes his eyes. ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Do you think they heard anything?’

  He opens his eyes. ‘Who knows?’

  Summer

  I take the shopping straight to Grandad’s house. When I get there, he’s at the dining-room table, staring out of the back window. There are old photo albums spread across the table. I go and make him a coffee and sit down with him.

  ‘You’re a good girl, Summer,’ he says.

  Grandad looks at me for a few seconds and then looks back out into the garden. He doesn’t say anything, but just sits and sips his coffee. I try and work out what he might be thinking. He’s thinking about Nan, I bet. He must be. I don’t know what to say to him. I don’t know whether I should talk about Nan, say how amazing she was and how I miss her. Or maybe that would make him feel worse. Maybe he doesn’t want to think about her right now. So I look at the sparrows flitting around the stale slices of bread I threw into the garden, watch as they fly off when the pigeons land and start pecking at the bread.

  After a while, I look at the table and pull one of the photo albums over towards me. I start flicking through it. There are pictures of Dad in there from when he was just a kid. They look faded.

  Looking at pictures of Dad always makes me feel weird. It makes me think about what he’d be like now. It makes me wonder whether things would have turned out differently if something could have stopped it happening, stopped Dad from dying. Like if he’d stayed in bed that day instead of going out. If he’d been delayed and been in the same places but at different times, he might be alive now. And that always makes me think about what my life would be like now, how it would be different. Would I be different if I had a dad? If I had my dad?

  All the photos are of days out and things. Dad as a little kid on a beach, wearing some really disgusting swimming trunks, digging a moat around his sandcastles. Dad on a fairground ride. Everyone sitting around a table in the garden eating barbecued food. Nan stepping out of a caravan. She looks much younger in the picture. Which is obvious, I s’pose, as it was taken about forty years ago. But she almost looks like a different person. She looks pretty. I never really thought of Nan as being pretty. She’s always been old to me. That sounds kind of mean, I know. But in the picture, her face looks different – I mean, aside from the fact that she’s younger. I don’t know how to describe it. She looks softer. Happier. She’s smiling in the picture and not just with her eyes – with her whole face. I keep flicking through the photos, and as I’m doing that I realise Grandad’s looking at them with me. I feel like I should say something.

  ‘She was really pretty, wasn’t she?’

  Grandad smiles sadly and for a second I think he’s gonna cry. He nods his head. ‘She was,’ he says. ‘She was beautiful.’

  He gazes at the pictures of Nan and Dad as I flick through the album. There aren’t many of Grandad. Must be because he took the photos.

  ‘Your dad would be in his forties now,’ Grandad says after a while. He sounds matter of fact about it.

  I look at him. He hardly ever talks about Dad.

  ‘Do you miss him?’

  Grandad straightens himself up in his chair. He takes another sip of his coffee, carefully places his mug on his coaster and looks at the photos and nods. ‘Every day. Every single day, Summer.’

  ‘Me too.’

  We sit and look at the photos and we’re silent for a while longer.

  ‘Your nan missed him a lot,’ Grandad says all of a sudden. He sighs. He sits up straight in his chair and looks into the garden.

  I nod. It feels like Grandad’s left a space for me to say something, but I don’t know what to say.

  He nods as if I have said something, still looking out of the window. ‘They had a bit of a love/hate relationship most of the time,’ he says. ‘They always did, right from when he was a little lad. But the truth was, they had more in common than either of them would ever have admitted. They were both stubborn as mules for a start.’ He laughs for a second.

  I look at a picture of Dad in the album. He’s standing outside Nan and Grandad’s house, leaning on a car. He’s smiling, laughing at a joke or something. He’s got a really awful haircut – a totally wonky fringe.

  ‘The thing is, because they were so similar, they always knew how to press each other’s buttons,’ Grandad goes on.

  I kind of knew this much from Mum. She’s told me before that Nan didn’t really approve of the lifestyle she and Dad chose. She thought it wasn’t right. Mum and Dad always thought they were ‘alternative’. Hence my and Sky’s hippy names. But Nan always wanted Dad to get a good job and earn some money. Mum and Dad weren’t interested in that stuff though.

  ‘Problem is, because they were both stubborn, they both thought they were right and neither ever backed down,’ Grandad says.

  ‘Oh,’ I say. I’m not sure this is what I want to hear about them right now even though I know it’s true. Right now, I’d like to hear about how good they were as people, not hear about their shortcomings. ‘They loved each other though, didn’t they?’

  Grandad gulps down some of his coffee and places his mug on the coaster. He looks at me and smiles. ‘Of course,’ he says. ‘They were close. Your nan would have done anything for your dad. And he loved her. They just had a funny way of showing it sometimes.’

  I smile back at Grandad, but I feel sad.

  ‘It’s a shame,’ he says. ‘The way it all worked out.’

  I expect him to go on, to say more. I’m desperate for him to, but he doesn’t. He
gets up from the table and takes his mug through to the kitchen. I follow him through. He puts his mug in the sink and then just stands there looking out of the back door.

  ‘That lawn needs cutting, Summer,’ he says. ‘I must do that this afternoon.’

  I think about what to say next, whether I should ask him if he needs any help around the house. Or whether I should just leave him to it and go home. And as I stand and look at him, I feel sorry for him. How must he be feeling? It must be awful to live with someone for most of your life, to build your whole life with them, and then one day they’re gone. It feels so empty in the house without Nan. There are reminders of her everywhere.

  Before I can say anything, Grandad turns to me and says, ‘She was never the same after your dad died, you know.’

  I’m taken aback. I get the same knot in my stomach that I had when I went to the hospital to see Nan after she had the heart attack.

  ‘She wasn’t happy. She went into herself,’ he says.

  ‘Really?’ I say, because I don’t know what else to say. ‘Why?’

  Grandad turns and looks at me. ‘She took it really badly. We all did, I s’pose. You don’t expect something like that to happen. It was so sudden, so unexpected. It felt like he’d been stolen away from us.’

  I nod. I feel a bit uncomfortable listening to this. But at the same time I want to hear more.

  ‘She even went to see spiritualists for a bit, you know,’ Grandad says.

  ‘Really? What’s a spiritualist?’ I say. ‘Is that someone who contacts the spirit world?’

  ‘Good question,’ Grandad says, and he sort of laughs. ‘They’re frauds if you ask me. Charlatans. They say they can contact the dead. But I think they just make money out of vulnerable people. I told her not to go, but . . . I suppose she had to do it.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘I didn’t know Nan was into that kind of thing. Did she find anything out?’