by Nancy Tucker
“Haven’t I already got this one?” she said.
“No,” I said. “Don’t be stupid.”
“Oh,” she said. “Sorry. Thank you.”
After tea we sat in the lounge with all her new toys and I asked her if her mammy and da had fights when she was in bed at night.
“Don’t know,” she said. She was trying to get her new doll out of its plastic box, but it was held inside with wire twists.
“But do they, though?” I asked.
“Yeah. Maybe sometimes,” she said. She tried to bite through the wire. I could hear it scrape her teeth.
“What kind of things do they fight about?” I asked.
“Just me and Pete,” she said.
“How?” I asked.
“Mammy gets cross with Da for spending so much time in the shed and not picking me up from school. And they fight about my reading. Because Da says don’t worry about it and Mammy says do worry. And sometimes they fight about Pete’s wonky foot. That kind of stuff.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Do yours?” she asked.
“Sometimes,” I said.
“What about?”
“Just about me,” I said. “Like about which one of them gets to pick me up from school. They really both want to do it. So they fight.”
“But no one ever picks you up from school,” she said.
“Sometimes you’re so stupid it makes me think I’m dying,” I said.
“Oh. Sorry,” she said.
Linda’s mammy brought in her birthday cake on a china plate, and her da came in with Pete on his hip, and we all sang “Happy Birthday.” I watched the candles until I had yellow flickers in my eyes when I blinked. Me and Linda took our cake into the garden and sat on the bricks by the shed.
“What did you wish for?” I asked.
“Can’t tell you,” she said.
“It still comes true if you only tell one person,” I said.
“Are you sure?” she asked. I wasn’t sure, but I did want to know, so I nodded.
“I wished for another brother or sister,” she said. She licked some icing off her finger.
“Why would you wish for that?” I asked. “They cry all the time. And they smell.”
“Pete doesn’t smell,” she said. “I like babies. Pete’s big now. I want a new baby.”
I was glad Linda had told me her birthday wish, because that meant it wouldn’t come true, and it was a silly waste of a wish. I didn’t know why anyone would want even one brother or sister, let alone two. As soon as you had a brother or sister your mammy and da could only care about you half as much, because the other half had to be for the baby. If Mam had another kid the bit of care she had left for me would be so small you’d have to have a magnifying glass to see it. Luckily she really hated kids, so it was really not likely she would ever try to get another one.
“If you could only have one out of Pete or me, who would you have?” I asked Linda.
She frowned. “Pete’s my brother.”
“You can only have one.”
“Pete, then.”
I didn’t think she had properly understood the question. That was another thing that unfortunately happened a lot with Linda: she didn’t understand perfectly easy questions.
“I mean if you could only have one of us. Me or Pete. You could have me, and I’d still be your best friend and the best at almost everything, or you could have Pete, who’s just a stupid old baby who can’t do handstands or walk on walls or stop people being mean to you at school.”
“I said. Pete.”
“But I’m your best friend.”
“He’s my brother.”
Something cold slithered down inside me, like winter water running down the inside of a drainpipe. I quite wanted to go home, but I knew if I left there was no chance I would get another piece of birthday cake. It wasn’t a risk worth taking. Sunday meant no school, and that meant no school dinner.
“I think you should probably try to love Pete a bit less,” I said.
“Why?” asked Linda.
“Make it easier for you when he’s not here anymore,” I said.
“Why’s he not going to be here anymore?” she asked.
“Might get lost or dead.”
“That won’t happen. We take too much care of him.”
“Yeah. Exactly. You do. Going to make it really sad for you when he dies.”
“What’ll you wish for on your birthday?” she asked, scratching a bug bite on her leg.
“Mine’s not for ages,” I said. I wiped my finger around my plate to pick up the last cake crumbs. If my birthday had been right then, right that second, I would have wished that Linda would give me the rest of her piece of cake.
“But what’ll you wish for when it is?” she asked.
“Don’t know,” I said. “Probably just to be able to fly or have an ice cream van. Something like that.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Those are good wishes.”
It wasn’t true. I would wish Mam and Da fought about me when I was in bed at night.
A few weeks after Linda’s birthday it was half term, and she went to the seaside to visit her nana. The day she came back I sat on her doorstep from very early in the morning, and when I saw her car coming down the road I stood up and waved. She opened the car door, shouted, “Chrissie!” and ran up the path to stand next to me. She smelled different to usual, less like laundry and more like an old woman’s house, but that did make sense, because her nana was an old woman and she had been staying in her house. I didn’t mind the different smell. It had felt funny her being away, like a bit of me had been missing. Not a big bit. Just like a finger or thumb. I had still missed it.
* * *
• • •
Chrissie,” said Linda’s mammy, coming up the path. “Would have been nice to have had a bit of time to unpack and get settled before we had any visitors.” She unlocked the door and carried Pete inside.
“Too bad I’m already here, then,” I said, following her.
When me and Linda had had a biscuit and some orange squash, we went upstairs and lay on her bedroom floor with her sea glass collection spread all around us. Whenever Linda went to her nana’s she came home with clatters of fresh sea glass, and we sorted it by color into jars under her bed. I always snuck some for myself while we were sorting, as much as I could stuff in my pockets without making clinking sounds when I walked. I didn’t have much of a place to put sea glass that day, because it was stickily hot and I was wearing a summer dress that flared in a circle when I spun but that didn’t have any pockets. I preferred wearing clothes with pockets because then I could keep Da’s marble with me, and I liked to have Da’s marble with me all the time, but sometimes it was just too hot for pockets. I put some sea glass into my underpants when Linda went to the toilet. Cool against my secret skin.
We had just finished filling up the green jar when Linda’s mammy came in. Her face was red and sweaty and the front of her dress was covered in flour. I thought she had probably been making scones. She was always making scones.
“Oh. Chrissie,” she said when she saw me on the floor. “You’re still here.”
“Yes. I am,” I said. Linda sat up and looked like she’d been doing something bad, but I stayed flat on my belly. My dress had ridden all the way up my back, but I didn’t pull it down. Linda’s mammy looked at my bare legs and graying underpants with the elastic worn out, and her face went slicker and redder and crosser. I would have stayed on the floor and let her boil until she exploded, but I thought she might be able to see the sea glass outlined on top of my bottom, so I sat up. I sat with my legs spread wide. She looked away.
“Linda, can you take Pete out?” she asked. “I’m getting a headache.”
“Yeah,” said Linda, and started putting her shoes on. I smil
ed her mammy a syrupy smile.
“I’ll help with Pete too,” I said. She put her fingers to her forehead, as if I had made her headache a lot worse, and went back downstairs.
“She hates me,” I said to Linda.
“Yeah,” she said. “I know.”
“Why?” I asked, though I knew it was because of the gray-hair thing.
“She doesn’t like your mammy,” said Linda. My face felt splashed with hot water. I only had one shoe on, and I used that foot to kick her leg, leaving a red mark in the shape of my heel. She yelped and her eyes glassed with tears. I was glad.
“She doesn’t even know Mam,” I said. “She shouldn’t be talking about her. No one should.”
“All right, all right,” said Linda. She went back to her laces, breathing hard out of one side of her mouth. “That’s not even the only reason my mammy doesn’t like you,” she said. “There’s another thing too.”
“What?” I asked, getting ready to kick her again.
“You gave me nits,” she said.
I didn’t kick. I smiled. “Yeah,” I said. “I did.”
I liked remembering about the nits. They had lived in my hair when I was seven, biting and sucking and making me itch so much I wanted to peel the skin off my head, itching even worse than my eczema. I scratched until my nails were catching on big, oozy scabs, and they were still there, black speckles I had to dust off my pillow every morning. One playtime Linda was getting on my nerves, so I clamped my hands on either side of her eyes, pulled her head against mine, and rubbed. She kicked my legs and tried to twist her face to bite my wrists but I held tight. By the next day she was scratching. By the end of the week she was off school, sitting in a cold tub while her mammy pulled a comb through her hair and gagged when dead nit bodies fell into the water. That never happened to me. Mam cut my hair off instead.
Linda was crouched over her shoe, breathing like she had just run up the hill that went to the alleys. The bows she was tying in her laces were so big and floppy that by the time one was finished the other had worked itself free again.
I walked forward on my knees. “I’ll do it,” I said. I tied them in my special knots, the ones that never came undone, no matter how much you ran around. I usually ended up doing Linda’s laces for her, just like I usually ended up saying her lines in assembly and doing her worksheet if she got stuck. I finished the knots and patted her foot.
“There you go,” I said. “They’ll never come undone.”
“You’re so clever, Chrissie,” she said.
“I know,” I said.
As soon as we got outside a soupy wave of heat glopped over us, sticking my dress to my back with sweat. It was the sort of day where, if we had been at school, the milk would have been sour and cheesy by playtime. Lots of mammies were sitting outside their houses with their skirts hoicked up to their thighs, and some of them had babies with them, bare except for nappies and dribble. Pete was wearing a sun hat that used to be Linda’s. He looked like a fat mushroom. I thought it was ridiculous, but I knew some grown-ups might think it was sweet, so we took him to the shop in case Mrs. Bunty was one of those grown-ups. Turned out she wasn’t. When I lifted Pete up she said, “Nope. I know your tricks, Chrissie. They won’t wash today.”
“I haven’t got any tricks,” I said. (Wasn’t true. I was champion of tricks.) “We’re looking after Pete. His mammy’s got a headache. He wants some licorice allsorts.”
“Likely story. Off with you now,” she said.
Pete started to grizzle as Linda carried him out of the shop, and I gave Mrs. Bunty a glare that said, “See what you have done. Everybody is sad now and it is all your fault.” She didn’t look nearly as guilty as she should have looked.
“Shoo, Chrissie,” she said. “And don’t try swiping anything today. I’m watching you, and so’s him up there.”
I put my hands over my ears. “I wish people would stop going on and on about boring old God,” I shouted, and ran out of the shop.
The day felt very long with nothing to do and no sweets to eat. We went to the playground because we couldn’t think of anything better. Donna and Betty were there, doing clapping games under the tree.
“Where’s that little girl you had that time?” I asked Donna.
“Ruthie?”
“Yeah.”
“Her mammy doesn’t like her playing out a lot,” she said. “She thinks it’s not safe.”
I wished Ruthie was there. I remembered slapping her arm. I’d enjoyed that. Linda joined in the clapping games but I didn’t because clapping games were for babies. I climbed the tree instead, crouched in the branches, and looked across at the alleys. I could just see the edge of the blue house, and looking at it made my belly fizz. I hung down from a high branch by my hands.
“Look! Look at me!” I shouted. Donna barely even stopped clapping.
“Anyone can do that,” she said. “You’re not special.”
“Well I know something special, lamp girl,” I said. My arms were starting to come loose in their sockets but I didn’t drop down.
“What?” asked Betty.
“I know who killed Steven,” I said. I didn’t need to remember; it was already there, at the front of my brain. Saying it felt like a delicious firework that would never stop exploding.
“Oh, shut up, Chrissie,” said Donna. “Stop showing off. Steven died ages ago. No one even cares anymore.”
My fingers slipped and I fell. Donna laughed. Rage ballooned inside me, a sharp lasso. I kicked her in the back, and Betty squawked and slapped my ankle. I kicked her too. They both cried, so I called them crybabies, and Linda fussed over them so I called her a sick brain. The crying was very boring to watch. When it had been going on for maybe seven hours I told Linda to come and have a hanging-upside-down-on-the-swing-poles competition with me.
“No,” she said. “I’ve got to look after Pete.”
“Betty?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “My back hurts.”
“Lamp girl?” I asked.
“No,” said Donna. “I don’t like you. And that’s not my name.”
“WHY DOES NOBODY LIKE ME?” I roared. Nobody said what they were supposed to say—that they did like me really—so I sat under the tree in a cross heap, pulling up handfuls of grass.
“People do too still care who killed Steven,” I said when everyone had stopped sniveling.
“Who did, then?” asked Betty. Donna elbowed her to show that that wasn’t the right thing to have said at all.
“Not telling,” I said. I wasn’t going to waste it on them.
“See,” said Donna. “You don’t know.”
“I do too know,” I said. “But I’m not telling. Linda, come on. Let’s go somewhere else.”
She had rolled onto her back and put her legs in the air, and she was helping Pete balance on the soles of her feet. He squealed and gripped her hands.
“I want to stay here,” she said.
“Well I don’t,” I said.
“You go if you want to,” she said. “I’m staying. Pete’s having fun. I’m staying with him.”
The ticking got louder. Each tick sounded like a door slamming. I looked at Pete’s chubby arms and legs, his head tipped toward Linda’s chest.
“You look so stupid, Linda,” I said. “Everyone can see your underpants.” She put Pete down and pulled at her dress. “Let’s play hide-and-seek,” I said.
Pete clapped his hands. “Hidey seek! Hidey seek!”
Ticking. Louder. Fizzing. Thrumming.
“Come on,” I said. “Linda, you can count.”
She looked surprised, because usually when we played hide-and-seek I was the first one to count, and then sometimes I was the second and third and fourth and only one to count if that was what I wanted.
“Okay,” she said. “Pete, come o
n, you be on my team.”
“No,” I said. I took his wrist. “He’s on my team.”
He whined and reached for Linda, but I bent down next to him. “If you come with me I’ll give you jelly babies,” I said in his ear. He stopped whining and clapped his hands. I didn’t have any jelly babies. He didn’t know that.
“Are you sure you want to go with Chrissie?” Linda asked him.
He nodded. “Hidey seek!” he chirruped.
“You can’t make him hide anywhere dangerous,” she said.
“I know,” I said.
“All right,” she said. “Shall I do thirty or forty?”
“A hundred,” I said.
“What? We never do a hundred. That’s too long.”
“No it’s not. We’ll be able to get into better hiding places if you do a hundred. Go on. Just do it.”
She looked at Donna and Betty, but Betty was busy trying to repair one of her daisy chains and Donna was busy looking like a lamp and a potato at the same time. She turned toward the tree.
“One . . . two . . . three . . .”
Donna and Betty ran off together, into the bushes at the back of the playground. I pulled Pete in the other direction. Toward the gate. Out of the playground. Up the street and round the corner. The ticking in my ears was so loud I was sure the rest of the world must be able to hear it. Pete was already having to trot to keep up, but I needed him to go faster. Once we turned the corner we couldn’t see the playground anymore, and I couldn’t hear Linda at the tree. I tried to keep count in my head, giving each tick a number. I thought she must be on about thirty. I had seventy more ticks until she started looking.
By the end of Copley Street, Pete’s wonky foot was dragging on the ground. I could see the alleys, but we weren’t close enough. If Linda started looking now she would find us before we got there. Pete pulled his wrist out of my hand and stopped in the middle of the pavement.
“Come on,” I said. “Walk.”
“Babies?” he said, reaching up.
“You can have one when we get there,” I said. I pointed to the blue house. “There, see? That’s where we need to get to. That’s the hiding place.” I lifted him up and walked a few steps with him on my hip, but he was heavy and kept slipping down.