How to Find Home

by Mahsuda Snaith

  The next morning, Jules was on a berserker. She goes on a berserker most days but, depending on her mood, the length and height of the rage can vary. Sometimes it can last for a few minutes, other times for a few days. One time she stole an Alfa Romeo, drove down to Bridgend and set the car on fire by the side of the road. That berserker lasted a good week.

  This particular morning Jules was at about seven on the Richter scale. She stomped around the squat in her Doc Martens, creating little earthquakes wherever she went. Cigarette butts fell from ashtrays; beer cans tipped over, spilling golden pools across the floor that trembled with each stamp. At first she didn’t say anything, slicing through the crowd in her oversized camo jacket like a viper through grass, tongue nipping in and out as if tasting the air for prey. Then, when she saw the lava lamp had been left on overnight, she swung her arms up to the ceiling.

  ‘Would’ve served you FucKeRS right if you’d been BuRnt to FAg AsH!’

  She kicked some beer cans out of the way and went into the kitchen where she found a dog turd sitting square in the middle of the steel sink.

  ‘PEEEETE!’ she screeched as she stormed through the squat.

  She kicked open every door, checked down the side of every piece of makeshift furniture, until she found Boy curled up on the bath mat by the shower. Pete was nowhere to be seen.

  For the next ten minutes Jules marched around the squat berserking. Spit shot from her mouth like embers from a volcano. She was trying to make a rollie but kept getting distracted by new branches of rage so that she had to continually restart it.

  ‘BlooDY CHeek oF iT! YoU PEople taKe thE PiSS!’

  The squat got emptier as people escaped. Whenever Jules turned to rant at one side of the room, the group behind her stumbled out until she was spinning around shouting at nothing but empty beer boxes and a couple of people too far gone to move.

  I was clearing cans throughout the ruckus. It seemed the most helpful thing to do. If there’s one thing Jules can’t stand, it’s mess. When we shared a shop doorway she couldn’t have any old cardboard box beneath her sleeping bag; she had to have a fresh one with no rips and no battered edges.

  ‘No excuse not to be neat,’ she’d say. ‘Sign of being civilized, that is.’

  There were syringes splayed across the hallway floor. I wrapped them up, knowing if Jules saw them her Richter scale would go through the roof. But she saw me taking them to the bin, the way I’d wrapped them up in miles of loo roll and was carrying them all delicate.

  ‘For FucK’S sake! JusT CoS You’RE a SMaCKHEaD dOn’t MEAn YoU cAn’t BE a LiTTle FuCKing TidY, DOeS IT?’

  She looked straight at me, even though they were nothing to do with me. But there’s no reasoning with Jules when she’s on a berserker. She marched off and I dropped the needles in the bin.

  I thought about checking my phone and then decided against it. Instead, I sat down on a wooden step-stool and played with the rubber bands around my wrist. I closed my eyes and tried to remember the story from when I was a kid, the one about a girl made of stationery. Her mouth was a paperclip, her eyes drawing pins, and her arms, body and legs were made of thick, wide loops of rubber band. She had two crisscrossing rubber-band plaits hanging from her rubber-band head and could stretch herself as tall as mountains and twist her way through the tightest cracks. She travelled to new places, befriended the locals and defeated moustachioed villains along the way. Each night she would staple herself to a tree and rock herself to sleep.

  The Rubberband Girl belonged to no one. The Rubberband Girl was free.

  Jules shouted from the living room.

  ‘FoR LorD’s sake! SOMeOne DO SOMeTHIng with This BiTCH!’

  Boy ran into the kitchen and jumped straight on to my lap, nuzzling into me as she whimpered. Jules walked in and nodded her head, glad the situation had been dealt with. She was still trying to roll her cigarette, eyes flickering up and down, shoulders rolled forward. I stroked Boy’s leathery ears and felt the stump from her missing leg digging into my thigh. Her whimpering quietened. Jules stared at me as though straining to remember some bastard awful thing I’d done. Then, Rizla stuck to her lip, she clicked her fingers.

  ‘What’s All this BOLLocKS aboUt you PissiNg off with PoSh BOy?’

  She pulled off the Rizla and began rolling, sprinkling a bit of green bud in with the tobacco. She stared at me with her broken eye.

  Most of the time you don’t notice Jules’s broken eye. It’s only when she stares that you can see the right one looks off to one side. It’s nearly all black from an accident with a pellet gun. She still has the vision of a bloody hawk though. Sometimes I think she can see my thoughts.

  She made a clicking noise with her mouth.

  ‘You know he’s PSycHOtic, don’t yA?’

  I smiled in a cheery way. Jules says it’s a nervous tic, my smiling. She says when I’m real worried I go on smiling-benders, like I’ve got a whole banana stuck in my mouth. Her skin blossomed with red blotches.

  ‘BEing PSycHOtic is NO LauGHinG MattER, MoLLy!’

  My smile dropped.

  Jules is sensitive about psychotics on account of her being diagnosed as one at fifteen. She’s been in and out of mental health wards ever since. Now she sees it in everyone.

  I put Boy on the floor and went back to the living room to collect more cans. It didn’t seem to matter how many I picked up, there were always more. Boy followed me and Jules followed behind, burning lasers into the back of my skull.

  ‘He’s all right,’ I said.

  I didn’t look at her as I said it but I could still feel her bubbling up.

  ‘You’Ve OnLy kNown Him FiVe BLeeDING MinuTes, MoLLs. I mEAn …’

  When I looked up Jules was standing in the middle of the room with her spliff hanging limp from her lips. She looked around, noticing for the first time that every other bugger had left.

  ‘They took their time to FuCk! off, didn’t they?’

  She kicked as she blurted out the FuCk! as though kicking out the last of her rage. Boy sensed the change in atmosphere and began scavenging for pieces of food.

  Jules lit her rollie and eased her body into a blow-up armchair. She gestured for me to sit on the children’s beanbag. Her phone trilled with a little tune from the nineties. She pulled it out of her pocket, a boxy Nokia so old it was probably considered antique. She glanced at the screen and threw it on the floor.

  I sank deep into the bumpy folds of the beanbag. Luca had said he needed to get a few things sorted and that he’d meet me outside the vintage shop near Broadmarsh Shopping Centre at twelve thirty. It was already ten thirty and I wanted to visit the castle first, so I didn’t have much time for Jules’s opinion, which would, no doubt, take some time.

  ‘You’re so soft, Molls,’ she said. ‘You haven’t thought it through, have you?’

  She listed all the reasons I couldn’t leave with Luca:

  The Social would get on my back when I didn’t report in.

  The Job Centre would get on my back when I didn’t report in.

  The Drugs Unit would get on my back when I didn’t report in.

  Rusby would be on my back quicker than the lot of them when he realized I’d gone.

  Just hearing his name made me sink deeper into the beanbag. I was trying my best to forget Rusby; I’d decided not to mention him to Jules at all. But word gets around quick with the homeless and Jules knew more about it than I did. When he’d been released. Who he’d been crashing with. How he was on the search for me and letting every person he came across know it.

  I picked at the dirt beneath my nails as I thought about the list Jules had given me. She’d forgotten I wasn’t in touch with the Social, the Job Centre or the Drugs Unit any more. It was her and everyone else we knew that was. Truth is, I don’t do well with the authorities. Just the flash of their badges makes the blood rush to my cheeks and my legs fill with an itch that makes me want to run to the edge of the world.

  Jules’s phone tri
lled again. She craned her head forward to look at the screen, then leant back.

  ‘Who’s that?’ I said.

  She pointed at me, hard and forceful.

  ‘Don’t change the subject.’

  The tune carried on playing as Jules tried to think of other reasons I shouldn’t leave. As the phone stopped, her expression crumpled, her bottom lip fluttering.

  ‘What about me?’ she mumbled.

  I frowned.

  ‘You?’

  She straightened out her bottom lip and smacked her hand against her chest.

  ‘Yeah, me. I’m only your bessie mate, aren’t I? We take care of each other.’

  I nodded quickly.

  ‘Always.’

  Jules’s shoulders slackened. Her skin was back to a blue-white colour so I knew she was simmering down. Jules likes to pretend she’s tough as granite but really she’s soft as sponge. She’d rather die than show anyone. Which is half the reason she gets in all the trouble she does.

  ‘I mean, you would tell me,’ she said, ‘if you were going to leave.’

  She was looking at me as though this was an obvious thing, like telling her if she had spinach between her teeth. I nodded even though I hadn’t planned on telling her anything.

  Jules passed the spliff to me and I took a toke, staring straight up as I blew out a fountain of smoke. I placed my finger over the key hanging around my neck and closed my eyes. I saw the Rubberband Girl bouncing from one land to the next. Twanging across deserts, catapulting across oceans, using her rubber-band plaits to swing from tree to tree.

  ‘It’d be nice though, wouldn’t it?’ I said. ‘To get a change of scenery.’

  I meant only to think it but the words slipped out. When I looked over at Jules she was staring at me with her broken eye. If you get real close to her you can see the universe in there, a string of gas and stars whirling around in the dark of her pupil. She waggled her finger at me.

  ‘This is not like you, Molls,’ she said. ‘This is not like you at all.’

  I know she meant it as a bad thing but I liked it when she said that. I looked at her broken eye and, maybe because of the spliff, maybe because I was still imagining the Rubberband Girl, I smiled.

  Jules sat bolt upright. I tried to straighten out the smile but it was too late. Her skin turned volcanic red.

  ‘I’m not allowing this!’ she said. ‘I ForBiD iT!’

  She hit her fist against the arm of the blow-up chair and it bounced up, nearly hitting her in the face. She blew her cheeks out, the rage ready to erupt. I shrugged my shoulders as though I hadn’t seen any of this.

  ‘I’m only having a laugh, Jules,’ I told her. ‘I don’t even know the lad, do I?’

  I sniggered to show how absurd this all was. She glared at me with the universe there in her eye. It made me shiver.

  Boy came sniffing at Jules’s feet, her little wet nose skimming the edge of Jules’s trainer. I waited for Jules to bat her away but she was too intent on staring at me. I looked down at Boy’s stump.

  ‘You won’t throw her out, will you?’ I said.

  Jules glanced down.

  ‘She ain’t my dog.’

  ‘But you’ll take care of her?’ I went on. ‘Like you took care of me?’

  As soon as I said that, Jules’s whole body relaxed and Boy, sensing her chance, jumped on to Jules’s lap. You had to give it to Boy; that dog had guts.

  ‘Honestly, Jules,’ I said. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

  She looked at me a little longer. Then she gave Boy a little rub on the head.

  ‘Too rigHt,’ she said.

  The Cyclone

  Knights surrounded the castle. Their helmets and polished armour gleamed in the sun. Some held shields bearing lion emblems; others wore digital wristwatches that showed beneath the cuffs of their costumes. Damsels stood beside them, wearing tall pointed hats with flimsy fabric soaring from the tops. They handed out flyers to tourists and beamed serenely, telling everyone to make haste to the medieval festival before gesturing to the ticket booth shaped like a dragon’s head.

  I stood on the mound by the castle, looking down at the cobbled street. I was hoping to see the busker with his flat cap and wild beard, to hear him bellow out one of his soul-cracking songs. His voice always smacked me hard in the stomach, so hard I could fold with the force of it. I suppose I shouldn’t want that feeling but it can make you numb, the homeless life. From the cold, yes, but also the way no one sees you. To feel that hit brings everything into focus. It makes sense of things, and what I needed right then was to make sense of the whole Luca situation. Of what Jules had said, and what she hadn’t. Of where I wanted my life to go, and how I planned on getting there.

  I waited another ten minutes but a burger stand was moving into the busker’s spot. I don’t know why I thought he’d be there; he’s not what you’d call the predictable type. Sometimes he gets into fights that land him in the nick and sometimes he’s just too pissed: conked out in some gutter, a dented can clutched in his hand. One time I saw him climbing up the side of the castle walls with his guitar case strapped to his back like he was trying to invade the grounds with nothing but music as his weapon. I was pissing myself about it for hours.

  I swung my camping rucksack on my back and made my way down the mound. As I was squeezing through the crowd I heard someone call for me.

  ‘Aaaay, Molls!’

  His voice cut sharp through the buzz. It bore right into my ear, splitting my skull in half and ricocheting through my spine. I knew it was him. I knew that he’d found me. But I also knew that if I stuck my head down low I could get away. I wrapped my jacket around my body, making myself smaller, weaving into the crowd and hoping its thickness would swallow me. The bodies enveloped me like a hug, but he was too quick, bouncing straight through them and landing in front of me. Rusby’s like a weasel in that way. Fast and springy.

  ‘Ay, Molls!’ he said again, bouncing on the spot. ‘Didn’t you hear me calling?’

  There was no hassle in his voice, which was some kind of blessing. I gave a twitchy smile and tried to act surprised. He was skinnier than when I last saw him which, given his nickname was ‘Scarecrow’, was saying something. I could tell just by looking at him that he was still on the hard stuff. His skin was zombie-white, his tracksuit hanging from his body like a flag from a mast. He was wearing the same red baseball cap he always wore to cover his receding hairline and, when he grinned, I could see that his teeth were yellowed and uneven like broken paving slabs.

  That’s what crack does to you. One minute your body’s fat with life and then you’re a mummified corpse.

  ‘What happened to my beautiful little boy?’ his grandma used to say when we visited, showing me pictures of a chubby toddler in a vest and shorts. Then she’d offer us a cup of tea with a plate of Jammie Dodgers. The biscuits tasted like sand after you saw her crying like that.

  The smile on Rusby’s face weakened. He had that pitiful look he gets when he needs a hit.

  ‘You gotta help me out, Molls.’

  Same old Rusby. I hadn’t seen him in three years, not since he’d pissed off to Aberdeen with that Slovakian girl, yet it had taken him all of half a minute to ask me to help him score.

  ‘I’m in a bit of a rush to be honest, Rusby,’ I said.

  He began bouncing quicker on his feet. A boxer once told Rusby he could be a world-champion featherweight if he ever got his life in order.

  He held his hands up.

  ‘Now I know things didn’t work out between us but that doesn’t mean we’ve got to have this wall of ice between us, does it, darling? Doesn’t mean that we can’t still be mates.’

  I squeezed my shoulders tight and pushed out a smile to show there were no hard feelings.

  ‘See you around, Rusby.’

  He shot his hand out, fingers clamping on to my wrist. His sinking grip felt like pulling on old boots – snug but pinching in at the same old places. His pupils were dilated, eyelids
twitching, and the stench of alcohol was heavy on his breath. He looked like he was ready to tear my head off. That’s the thing with Rusby; he can be happy as Larry one minute and bashing your teeth out the next. He cocked his head to the side.

  ‘Now don’t be rude, darling. You know I hate it when people are rude.’

  A man in jousting gear locked eyes with me. He’d been chomping on a burger, jaw frozen mid-chew, deciding whether or not to intervene.

  I sailed into the jouster’s body, seeing the image of me and Rusby before him. A tall skinny man in a polyester tracksuit with a hollowed-out face and me, a pathetic mouse of a girl with greasy hair and holes in her jeans. We were barely people; just waste products on the sidelines of humanity.

  I wondered how me and Luca would look to the jouster, standing at the station with our rucksacks. Suddenly the holes in my jeans were a fashion choice. We were students on a gap year and not two fuck-ups, which is all me and Rusby ever were.

  Rusby loosened his grip. His eyes turned puppy-dog.

  ‘Get us a bevvy at least, will you? For old times’ sake.’

  I looked back at the jouster. He was talking to a man in a fluorescent-yellow vest with a walkie-talkie. Legends tell us about knights in shining armour who come to a lady’s rescue. But they don’t tell you how the knight ends up glassed and blaming the damsel in distress for it. In a fight, when it comes to Nutter versus Honour, the Nutter wins every time.

  I looked at Rusby.

  ‘Just a quick one. Yeah?’ I said.

  His broken smile spread wide across his cheeks.

  The medieval music played as Rusby draped his arm over my shoulder and guided me to Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem. We all called it ‘the Trip’ but the full name is painted in old-fashioned script on the side of the pub with the words ‘the oldest inn in England’ underneath. Rusby always loved this place. The winding stairs and warren-like cubbyholes where he could sit tucked away without the bar staff walking by, recognizing him and throwing him out because he’d already been barred.