I’ve looked up mongrels on Google. They are often stronger and healthier than pure breeds. Survivors, in other words, who live on their wits, not their looks.
My wits are telling me I must get up and keep moving, using the cover of the woods, the long grass on open ground, the dense, spiky gorse bushes, anything I can find. It’s dangerous, this daylight. All the rules are reversed now. It’s only safe in darkness.
When I close my eyes for a moment, I can remember the smells of the hospital on the hill: the lemon hand-spray the nurses and visitors use before coming on the ward, the disinfectant in the corridors, the wood polish in the day room, the mouth-watering sweetness of cocoa from the vending machine. My tongue pokes through my cracked lips. I’m nearly swallowed up with anticipation.
It’s time to shift.
Chapter Four
Stop running. Look around. Where am I now? Crouching low on a steep hillside. Sweat is trickling down my neck. My thigh is screaming. The pain is making me drowsy. I want to sleep, to sink into oblivion.
I’ve sprinted until my tank is empty, until my legs have crumpled, until the soles of my feet are raw with rubbed blisters.
Beneath me lies a flat plain of farmland, a patchwork of brown, gold and green squares with houses and barns dotted here and there like raised badger sets. Above is a sharp, grassy incline, rising so high that cotton-wool clouds seem to be balancing on the top. I hold my hand up and let one sit on my palm. If it was candyfloss, I could pluck it down and gobble it up. I could eat the sky and then, maybe, the sun and have the moon for pudding.
I’d like to stay here until the end of time, in the warmth of the soil, and sleep. I’m drifting into my dream world, on a long-tailed speedboat, gliding between the giant rocks protruding from the azure Andaman Sea. My mother is next to me, wearing a wide wicker hat like an upturned lamp shade. When she laughs, beautiful red-whiskered bulbul birds fly from her mouth.
Sweet strains of music are whispering in my ears – the same melody, over and over. La la, la-la la, la la, la-la la. The sound is soft, distant, familiar. As the penny drops, I curl my knees over my chest and giggle.
An ice-cream van! I could be just a few minutes from a freezer full of lollies. I want to grab handfuls of them to hold against my skin and let their arctic coldness numb the burning in my thigh.
I’m running again, trainers scrabbling across bare patches of chalky earth, hands grabbing at clumps of dry stalks, body bent forward as I scale the fierce incline. Up and up, eyes watering, nose running, I’m driven only by the thought of a release from pain.
‘La la, la-la la,’ I’m singing, and I don’t care who hears. I’m almost there, the ridge at the top of the slope is just ahead. As I approach, my belly clenches. There’s a wooden fence all along the perimeter, cordoned off with orange plastic mesh. A stile leading to a car park has security tape across its steps. I creep up to the barrier and stare through the square holes. There are no other cars here, no people to witness what I am about to do.
What am I about to do? I haven’t thought this through.
The ice-cream man looks nice, kind even. If he’s got kids of his own, maybe he would help me? More likely he would just haul me off to the police station and claim his reward for finding a runaway. And I would end up in the detention centre with no windows, where unruly kids are ‘resocialised’. Crease says you get ‘chipped’ like a dog. The microchip they put in your brain stops you being a ‘threat to society’ and lets the government know where you are, twenty-four seven. No one really knows what happens in the centre. The kids who get caught never talk about it later.
Surprise is the best form of attack. That’s what Mr Thistle taught us about the English Civil War. Ice-cream Man won’t be expecting a raid. The van’s engine is running, so he won’t hear me approaching. I can distract him, reach in and grab whatever I can.
He’s wiping his counter with a cloth, his back turned to me. Think like Crease, Moby and Foo. I pick up a jagged flint and make a decision. It will take me five seconds to reach the van. No time to make a Plan B. Go, Caly!
I’m sprinting. I’m crouching next to the front tyre, ready to slip under the engine if necessary. I bite my lip so I don’t cry out with the pain in my thigh. Tasting blood seems a regular occurrence these days. Maybe, come the full moon, I’ll grow bushy eyebrows and long vampire teeth.
This isn’t make-believe, it’s war. And, for now, Ice-cream Man’s my enemy. I throw the rock as hard as I can up on to the roof of the van.
BANG BANG! It sounds like a coconut falling on to a corrugated hut, like a suitcase bumping down steps. It makes me cringe and cover my ears.
‘What the . . . ?’ Ice-cream Man has jumped out of the van and is looking up, taking off his baseball cap and scratching his head.
With the stealth of a leopard, I slink into the body of the vehicle, where the freezer is full of sweet treats. It’s not food I want, but ice. I can’t eat, no way. I need cold to dull the ache. Maybe then the horrible queasy feeling in my stomach will go away. In a nanosecond, I’m stuffing handfuls of lollies into my hoody and preparing to scarper.
There’s a low rumble, the sound of an engine approaching, then a loud woooo. My brain struggles to match the sound to an image, then, suddenly, there’s an information match. It’s a patrol car. I crouch down as low as I can.
‘Step away from the vehicle, sir,’ I hear a man with a stern voice say.
‘It’s not illegal to sell ice-creams. I’ve got a licence,’ replies Ice-cream Man defensively.
‘Please step away from the vehicle and put your hands in the air,’ repeats Stern Voice.
‘Give me a break!’ retorts Ice-cream Man. The squeak of metal. Two car doors are opening. Footsteps.
‘ID?’ asks Stern Voice.
‘In the van, with my licence.’ I feel the vehicle rock slightly as Ice-cream Man gets into the driver’s seat and reaches into a recess for his documents. I’m folding up as tight as a scrunched lolly wrapper, willing myself to be wafer thin, almost invisible, between two boxes.
‘This is a prohibited public area until the excursion ban is lifted,’ says Stern Voice. ‘Didn’t you see the signs?’
‘Sorry,’ apologises Ice-cream Man. ‘Head in the clouds, me. They don’t call me Mr Softie for nothing.’
There is no reaction from Stern Voice and his partner. Just a nervous laugh from Ice-cream Man.
Then, after a moment, ‘Lucky for you your paperwork’s in order, Mr Carter,’ comments Stern Voice. ‘We’ll need to escort you back to town. Please follow the patrol car until we get to the green zone.’
‘Wondered why there weren’t any punters,’ says Ice-cream Man – Mr Carter. ‘Normally my busiest park-up. How long until the ban’s lifted?’
‘The Media Pod will advise the usual channels when the area’s been swept,’ replies Stern Voice. ‘You’ll get a text.’
Clunk, clunk. The car doors are closing again.
‘I won’t hold my breath, then,’ says Mr Carter, putting the returned papers on the passenger seat. ‘Excursion ban, my Aunt Norah,’ he sighs, pushing the lever at his side into gear.
The van is moving. My escape route is closed off. Beads of sweat are trickling down my forehead.
Think logical, Paper Clip, I hear Crease say. What are the positives? There’s one, and it’s staring you in the face.
Yeah, that’s true. I’m a prisoner, but I haven’t been caught. Like a rat, like a flea, I’m just hitching a ride. I’m going to jump to freedom, when the moment’s right. When the world looks the other way, I’ll be gone, right under the noses of the FISTS, like a feather on the wind.
‘La la, la-la la,’ says the van defiantly, like it’s reading my mind.
Chapter Five
The smell of the ocean! We’re slowing down now. I’m ready to jump ship, Cap’n Carter.
‘On your way, then, boys,’ Mr Carter says cheerily as a short blast of siren indicates that the official escort has ended. ‘Back to fi
ghting the drug dealers, murderers and fraudsters, now you’ve successfully prevented the public consuming ice cream on a weekday in an out-of-town car park. We’re all safe in our beds, aren’t we?’
I like Mr Carter. I think he’s a bandit at heart. That’s one of the best things to be, according to the Feathers.
‘La la, la-la la,’ sings the van, the sound harsher and more metallic now we’re in town. We’re slowing to a stop. The engine keeps turning over with a raw rumble. Mr Carter is making his way towards the counter in the back. I try to shrink even more, hoping he won’t see me sandwiched between the boxes underneath. Large hands reach down for a packet of cones. They are five centimetres away from my face. Which one of us will shout the loudest when he hauls me on to the worktop by mistake?
He is opening the sliding glass window. The sound of big children’s voices assaults the space around me, like the screech of gulls fighting over fish.
‘Good afternoon, and what’s it to be, treasure?’ Mr Carter says to the first in line.
‘Choccy Mountain, please,’ replies a young girl, in monotone. ‘With all the stuff.’
‘You must have a head for heights, young lady,’ he says jokily. The ice-cream machine makes a deep gurgling, slurping noise, like my gran with a bowl of soup, before she forgot how to feed herself.
‘I’m going to eat it, not climb it,’ the girl responds, bored.
‘Sarcasm costs extra,’ says Mr Carter.
‘It says the toppings are free,’ whines the girl. I would laugh out loud, if my sit-u-a-shun was not so serious.
Why are are waiting, Caly? The moment is NOW!
Before you can say ‘mischievous macaque monkey’, I’m shooting from my hidey-hole like a bullet from a silenced gun. I’m out of the van and away down a street I’ve never seen before. A street full of parked cars and colourful terraced houses with balconies, running parallel to the sea. My escape is just as I hoped – so fast, no one has seen me. Only the big yellow bug eye in the sky, which doesn’t even blink.
I cross the road at a sprint and extend the distance between me and the queue of ice-cream teens. I hope Mr Carter’s not too angry when he discovers that he has mysteriously misplaced a box of Rainbow lollies. Tea-leaf, tea-leaf, tea-leaf THIEF! This isn’t a skipping game in a playground, I tell my conscience. No way. It’s about survival.
It’s unnerving, the buildings and cars and traffic, the feeling of pavement underfoot and the stench of rubbish spilling out from over-filled wheelie bins. In the countryside, I turned feral to survive. In this urban wilderness, my senses feel overloaded. There are so many predators here. Some of them are not even human – CCTV could capture me with one flash. I must stay off the main roads, at all costs.
I’m sprinting, checking left and right for an opening into an alley, where a kid who looks as beaten-up as me can hang out until dark. Nothing doing, just rows of steps up to grand entrances and down to basement flats. I choose the most unloved-looking building, covered in a creeping plant, and slip down stone stairs to a dark porch obscuring a door whose paint is peeling off and whose letter box is missing.
I sit on the bottom step, rip open the box of lollies and hold a handful against my thigh. I need a bath full of ice, but this will have to do. The cold makes my skin tingle. After a few minutes, numbness replaces pain. My tongue is dry but I don’t feel thirsty, just so tired.
A tabby cat with yellow eyes is staring down at me between the wrought-iron railings above. It rubs its face against the black bars and I can hear it purring. I’d give anything to be that cat, perfectly content in the sunshine.
Looking through the gaping hole in the door, the place looks empty: there’s a carpet of junk mail on the floor, dirty net curtains hang limply at the two windows, empty fast-food boxes are abandoned on the narrow terrace. I hunker on my calves, hug my knees, my back against the wall of the steps. It will be hours until it’s dark, but I must keep hidden, even though it smells like a toilet down here.
Above, the click, clack, click, clack of kitten heels, the bam bam bam of a ball being bounced, the week, week, week of a squeaky tyre on a bike or buggy as it’s pushed along. Although I am only a metre away from them, I am invisible, like a rat in a sewer. But I will surface again. This is not my last resting place, amongst the rubbish and the climbing ivy and the giant spider’s web that stretches from the window to the wall.
It’s just my hidey hole where I’ve decided to hang out and let the pain in my thigh calm down. I know there’s no escape route, Crease – nobody’s perfect. And I’m only going to close my eyes for a minute because I’m watching the gulls gliding in a circle and it’s making me sleepy. Shhh.
Chapter Six
The ground under my body is vibrating. I’m a sheet being jiggled to take out my folds. Is that thunder, rumbling closer? I open my eyes. They begin to focus on cracked concrete and tangled ivy. An old, wizened face (a man, a woman who has lost her hair?), peering at me, net curtain drawn to one side. A disfigured hand beckoning to me, pointing to the front door.
I feel like screaming, but no sound comes. One, two, three, I’m counting drops of water hitting the ground – that’s not good – and now the sky is falling in and I’m almost winded by the force of the water pelting down into the narrow basement, soaking me through.
The face has gone. Has it been there all the time, watching me? Did I imagine it? Fear has jumbled my responses. Dare I look through the gaping mouth in the door?
I tilt my head back and try to drink but the drops have turned to ice, hitting my skin like pebbles on glass. No part of me is dry. No part of me wants to stay in this dark, wet hole. My legs are moving before my brain even clocks the sliding of the bolts and the creak of hinges opening very slowly. My hip bone feels as if it is grinding against gravel. The pain is making me feel sick, but I can’t give in to it.
Up, up, up the steps, in three leaps, back on to the pavement. No one sees me. I’m invisible in the rain, a drowned rat scurrying, head down.
Flash flash BANG! The sound and light show has begun. The town looks like a film set for a moment, illuminated by a hundred arc-lamps, with a rain machine on full tilt. Spouts of water three metres high are spurting from storm drains.
I want someone to say ‘Cut!’ and to take me into a trailer full of warm towels, hot milk and a huge plate of chilli chicken with rice, to dry my hair and wrap me in the softest cotton robe you can buy.
I want Little Bird to hold me and tell me everything’s all right.
I don’t want to be sheltering in a pub doorway, waiting for the deluge to end. My clothes are steaming, my eyes are streaming. Not tears. My dam has burst. The water has to flow out somewhere.
A man with a ring through his cheek and a woman with studded eyebrows and black eyes appear out of the mist, walk past me with disinterest and push open the pub door. I glimpse customers at tables, tucking into fish and chips or lasagne. They look happy. I feel even more alone. The door swings shut before anyone inside can raise an eyebrow at the kid who is loitering, looking lost.
What’s your plan, Paper Clip?
I’ll keep moving, Crease. Like you said, a moving target is harder to hit.
I’m running through rainbows. The wall of water has become a fine mist shot through with sunlight. Richard Of York Gained Battle In Vain. Gran taught me that to help me remember the colours of the arc. She makes a wish whenever she sees one. I’m panicking, trying to think of the best thing to wish for. It’s no good – I can’t think clearly and sprint at the same time.
Come on, brain, help me work out what to do next. I need to get to the hospital. Let’s just focus on that, OK? My thigh feels like it’s being attacked by a meat slicer. How did I get injured? Did it happen when I ran away? Is it something to do with the feathers? Why did I take off with no money, no phone, no ID, no plan? It would help if you could stop your little game and tell me what happened. Just give me a clue – anything.
Glimpses of bright blue sea are winking at me as
I splash across roads, kerbs awash with overflow water from the drains. I’m heading west, I think, towards the setting sun and the hill in the far distance. I remember the view from the hospital ward where I was treated. It looked down over the town to the sea. This has to be the right direction.
I need to be vigilant. Now the rain has eased up, there will be patrol cars out and about again and the CCTV cameras will have a clear view.
‘Life can turn on a five-pence piece,’ Gran says. I never really understood what she meant until now. When things start spinning, they can go face up or down. Less than a day ago, I was a kid with a routine. I knew what to expect. Days were a blur of school, homework, thinking of new ways to avoid the electronic ID scan by the gates of our estate. At night, there would be Mum’s exotic stories of elephants and strange fish, and monkeys that steal food, clothes and trinkets from the night markets in Chang Mai. It didn’t matter that Dad wanted the TV and the whole front room to himself. We were happy, just the two of us.
Maybe I didn’t realise someone had flipped the coin and that things were in the balance. ‘Mai pen rai’ – no worries! – Mum always said, no matter what happened. Not long ago, though, I found her crying. She said she felt like the tiny Thai birds captured in nets so that they could be released during festivals. They were never truly free.
I told Mum about the Feathers; how they could scale almost any man-made barrier in their way, how they had this amazing agility. She smiled and asked if she were too old to join.
And she told me to be careful, because some people didn’t agree with that kind of crazy running without rules, even though this is a free country.
Chapter Seven
I’ve arrived in the Magic Kingdom, swear to God. In this part of town the buildings are like toy houses, leaning against one another, with chimneys and front doors all in a line and every colour you can think of. The road rises steeply and curves, coils, snakes back and forth. The castle-shaped towers at the top are raised high above the long brick structure beneath, under a deep pink and orange sky.
If I Could Fly Page 2