Num8ers

by Rachel Ward

  “No. Shut up.”

  “You did, didn’t you?”

  “No! I squashed your stomach down until the water came out, but I wish I hadn’t now, you bloody moron.”

  He reached over to me and ran his hand over my shaved head, the smile fading away as the situation sunk in. “You saved me. You saved my life. Jesus, Jem, I owe you big time, man.”

  I shrugged him off.

  “Forget about it. I just did what anyone would’ve.”

  “There isn’t anyone else here, though, is there? There was only you. Only you could’ve saved me. And you did.”

  “Just drop it, alright? It’s not a big deal. Look, at least we’re on the right side of the river now. We just need to walk back to our stuff. Get some dry clothes. I’m fucking freezing.” It was true. I was shivering violently, and so was Spider.

  We helped each other to our feet, staggered up the bank, and trudged upstream again. Spider was in front, like usual, but he kept stopping and looking back at me, then smiling, shaking his head, and carrying on. And all the time my mind was racing double-time. So, the numbers were right after all. It wasn’t his day today. But if I hadn’t been there, surely he would have drowned — he was nearly dead when I dragged him out of the water. Spider knew it: I had saved him. I’d kept him alive.

  My head was spinning now. What if he’d been meant to die today, but I’d made things turn out different? For the last couple of weeks, I’d felt guilty about the old tramp. I’d never meant to hurt him, but there was no escaping it: It felt like we’d chased him into the road. But perhaps the numbers were a two-edged sword. What if I didn’t just have a hand in causing death — what if I could save lives, too? And if I had saved Spider today, could I save him on the fifteenth?

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Our bags were still lying where we’d chucked them. Spider fished out the one in the river with a branch, and we both found some dry clothes, turning our backs on each other while we got changed. I was too cold — almost panicky cold — to worry if he was peeking, and too busy getting myself dry to think of sneaking a peek at him. In the hurry to leave, I hadn’t got any spare underwear from Val — frankly, I didn’t want to think about what she might wear under her clothes — so I kept my soggy bra and panties on and just changed my jeans and top. I put on as many dry layers as I could find, with Val’s coat on top, and we bundled our wet clothes together in one bag and set off again — cold, shocked, and shivering.

  Walking away from the river, we hit another series of rolling hills. More green waves, going on forever. Our adventure in the river had left me feeling dog-tired. My legs felt like lead as we trudged along. Not surprisingly, a bit of the spring had gone out of Spider’s step, too.

  We were still aiming for a little knot of trees on top of a hill. I was beginning to think they were like one of those mirage things in the desert, disappearing just when you got near them, but eventually Spider got to the top of one hill and gave a little shout —“Hey, we’re here!”—and amazingly, we were. We scrambled down the other side and up the last rise, and into the relative cover of a little clump of woodland.

  I sank down at the edge of the trees and looked back at the way we’d come. I couldn’t believe it was so far. “Look how far we’ve walked! No wonder I’m knackered.” I flopped backward, not caring what I was lying on.

  “If we can see all of that, anyone there could see us. Let’s go farther in,” Spider said. I didn’t know what was happening to him: It was like he’d suddenly swallowed a sensible pill or something.

  I groaned, struggled to my feet again, and followed him into the middle of the woods. He’d gathered up all the bags and found a place between four tree trunks to settle down. Although you could still see out to the fields when you stood up, when you were sitting down the plants and bushes blotted them all out. We were hidden.

  The ground was hard and uneven. Spider had spread out the blanket he’d been carrying. You could still feel lumps and bumps underneath you, but it softened it a bit.

  Spider was sitting propped up against a tree trunk, but I lay down flat and looked up at the trees above me. It was weird. Although I knew the trunks were pretty straight, they looked like they were bending together over me as they stretched up into the sky. Their leaves were black against the brightness, making a lacy pattern, almost too complicated to look at. It was like they were hypnotic. If you let yourself go, you started to get all mixed up in your head, and you could imagine that you were high up, looking down hundreds of feet to the leaves below you. The wind was swooshing through the branches, making this amazing spaced-out sound — it could have been wind or water or even traffic. Really soothing.

  “I can’t believe we just did that,” I said after a while.

  “What?”

  “Walked all that way.”

  Spider snorted. “Yeah, it’s pretty cool what you can do when you have to. Perhaps we’ll walk all the way to Weston.”

  “How far’s that?”

  “Haven’t got a clue. A long way, man.”

  I groaned again, and shut my eyes, and let my mind focus on the noise, only the noise…

  When I woke up, my head was aching and my mouth felt disgusting — dry inside and sticky ’round my lips. I had to struggle to remember where I was, and even when I sat up and looked around I wasn’t sure if it was morning or evening. My watch said five past four, which I guessed was the end of the afternoon, but it could have been the next morning, I just didn’t know. Spider was snoring away with his back to me, curled up like a baby. I could see the side of his face. Asleep, you could imagine him as a child — he was peaceful, kind of innocent. Just for a minute, I tested out the feeling: what it might be like to be someone’s mum. It made me feel scared — there was no way that was for me. I could never handle that much responsibility, and besides, how could I ever look a child — my own child — in the face and see their death before they’d even begun? Some people aren’t cut out for all that. I was one of them. No big deal.

  I rubbed my eyes and my forehead, but the pain in my head kept on throbbing. I reached across and dug into the bags, looking for something to drink. The Coke was welcome, but I wished we’d got something hot to drink — a nice cup of tea or some hot chocolate. Something comforting. Spider must have heard me rummaging about in the plastic bags because he unwound and turned over.

  “What time is it?”

  “Just gone four.”

  “God, we’ve slept the day away.” He sat up slowly. “I feel rough.”

  I passed the Coke over. “We’ve not really been eating and drinking today.”

  He took a long swig. “Aah, that’s better. Any sign they’re following us?”

  “Dunno, I can’t hear anything.”

  “We’ll have a look in a minute. Let’s have some food, then.” Once again, we delved into the bags and munched our way through chips, crackers, cookies, and chocolate.

  Spider stood up as he was eating and walked around our little woodland, up to the edge on one side, and then across the middle to pick up another biscuit, and on to the other side. “I can’t see anything,” he said, chewing and talking at the same time. “I was thinking we should walk on a bit farther, but it’s going to be dark soon. I think we should rest up here, set off early tomorrow.”

  I wasn’t going to argue with that. I didn’t mind if I never walked anywhere ever again.

  Having decided we were going to stay put, we were suddenly faced with twelve hours of nothing to do. It became impossible to relax, to sit still, and there was no question of sleeping. We both wandered around the wood for a bit, looked out at the view from various points. I stood for a long time watching banks of cloud roll across. They seemed to move so slowly, but if you fixed your eyes on one, then looked away for a few seconds, it had gone farther than you thought. Bit like us, walking through the fields, going so slowly, like a pair of bugs crawling on the surface of the planet, and then looking back to find we’d covered miles.

&nbs
p; “I’ve never seen so much sky,” I said. “It did my head in, walking out in the fields with all that sky above us.”

  “It’s good when you get used to it. There’s so much air, you can fill your lungs with it over and over again.” Spider flung his arms out wide. “It’s like this at the seaside. Great flat beach, and sea and sky. You’ll love it, Jem.” He turned ’round to face me. “We’ll find a B&B, and have fish and chips every day. We can walk along the pier, write things in the sand, just have a laugh.”

  He started clambering up a tree, but didn’t get very far before his feet slipped down. He tried again, with the same result. The light was going from the sky, like the color was being sucked out of it. The air temperature was dropping even lower, too.

  “It’s going to be dark soon,” I said with a shiver. “What do we do then?”

  “We’ll just have to go to sleep.”

  “It’s only half past four.”

  “I know, man, but what are you gonna do? Watch TV?”

  The reality of it was dragging me down. I started thinking about the cold, the blackness. I didn’t want to be out there in the dark. It had been bad enough the night before in the car, but at least we had had four metal walls and a roof.

  “Let’s not stay here, Spider. Let’s try and find somewhere else.”

  “We haven’t got time, mate. Can you see anywhere? It would take hours to find somewhere, and we’d be walking in the dark. We haven’t even got a flashlight.”

  Around us, the world was going from color to black-and-white. Soon it would be just black. I had no idea what went on in the countryside at night — animals? people with guns out hunting? — and I didn’t want to find out. I was starting to lose it.

  “Why haven’t we got a flashlight? Why?! Wasn’t it just a little bit stupid to come out here without a flashlight?”

  “Are you calling me stupid? What about you? Look in the mirror, Jem. There’s two of us out here and neither of us brought a flashlight. It’s not just me!”

  We were shouting in each other’s faces now. His spit sprayed my cheeks, went into my eyes, but I didn’t even care. I was so mad that he’d brought me here, put me in this situation.

  “I can’t look in a fucking mirror, can I? There’s no fucking mirror! There’s no fucking anything!”

  “Look, we’ve just got to deal with it, OK? I’ll try and find us a car tomorrow, but for tonight, we’re here, and that’s it.”

  “I don’t wanna be here, don’t you understand, you moron? I don’t wanna be here. We don’t know what we’re doing! We haven’t got a clue!”

  “For Christ’s sake! You are vexing me with your attitude.” He was right in my face, wagging a long finger in front of my eyes. “You can’t be a little girl out here! You’ve gotta grow up, man! What’s wrong with you? You were way harder back in London. Listen, I’m walking away from you before I do something or say something.” And he stalked off, shaking his head and flapping his hands about.

  “Yeah, just fuck off!”

  “You fuck off!” he shouted without turning ’round.

  Of course, there was nowhere to go. We were stuck on a tiny island. I could still see him, an agitated cartoon, silhouetted against the inky sky. I wanted to scream, Don’t you fucking walk away from me! but I bit my lip, tried to calm myself down, tried to disentangle the angry thoughts in my head and think straight. Whichever way you looked at it, we were in trouble. I went back to our camp and lay down on my side, pulling the coat over me and the blanket ’round me.

  If I closed my eyes, I saw bodies and bits: that old guy flying through the air, tattered pieces of bright blue on the ground, my mum. So I kept them open and stared at the odd pattern of branches, twigs, and leaves at ground level in front of my eyes. I watched a bug of some kind struggle up the stem of a plant and totter about at the end, the little leaves bending under its weight. My skin started to itch at the thought of bugs and spiders crawling all over me all night. God, the countryside was disgusting.

  I heard Spider crunch back through the undergrowth, then plonk himself down nearby and rummage in the bags. He had obviously fetched out another blanket, because I could hear him shifting around where he sat, trying to get comfortable, then more rummaging, and the sound of something scraping, something metallic.

  I thought, I’m not going to talk to him, he can do whatever the hell he likes, I don’t care, but every fiber of me was tuned in to him now, trying to figure out what he was up to. After a pause, there was the unmistakable flick of a lighter and a little glow in the gloom. A tiny crackle as his cigarette took, and then a long breath out and a gentle sigh of satisfaction.

  I sat up, and his voice said, “I knew you weren’t asleep. Here, do you want a drag?” The glowing tip of the cigarette moved toward me as he held it out. I took it and inhaled. There was something reassuring about the smoke — it felt normal, familiar, comforting.

  “Sweet,” I said, but I didn’t really mean the smoke, welcome though it was — it just felt good to reestablish a connection. The way I saw it, we couldn’t really afford to fall out.

  We passed the cigarette between us for a while, not speaking much, just being in the moment. Then Spider said, “Do you think there are any black farmers?”

  “I dunno, shouldn’t think so. Why?”

  “I like this place. I like the feel of it under my feet. I like looking for miles.”

  All this, based on one day, walking across some fields. “Come on, Spider, that’s not going to happen.”

  “Why not? Do you need a diploma to be a farmer? Do you need a degree? Do you need to be white?”

  “I dunno, I dunno. I guess you need money, though. Loads of money.”

  “I wouldn’t have to buy a farm, just work on one. I don’t think running around for Baz or anyone like him is much of a career. I don’t wanna do that stuff. I need to find something else.” His voice was passionate in the dark. “I’ve got out now. We’ve got out. I don’t wanna go back. Wherever we end up, I want to start a new sort of life, not fall back into my old ways.”

  What he was saying, it touched me. He was speaking from the heart.

  “The Nutter was right, you know,” he continued.

  “No way!”

  “No, he was right. People like you and me, we’ve got the future all mapped out from the time we’re born. Dole queue, checkout, building site, street. No future at all. I don’t wanna be like that.”

  “You going to go back to school, get your equivalency?” I asked, not believing it for a minute.

  “Nah, think I’ve left it a bit late for that. But I want to do something. I want to be different. I don’t want to be no cliché black boy, a statistic.”

  The knot that had been forming in my stomach as he spoke gave a lurch and tightened to a physical pain. It was breaking my heart to hear him talk about the future. How could I sit there and listen to him, to the boy with only a week left? What he was saying, it was right, it was inspirational. But it was way too late. If the numbers were right. If…

  I knew I was on the edge of blabbing. I wanted to tell him everything — to share it, maybe work out a way to change it. But you can’t do that, can you? I could never tell someone their number, except bastards like McNulty, and he was probably too stupid to figure out what it meant. I swallowed hard, trying to get back in control of my emotions. Change the subject, fill the void with words.

  “How come you ended up living with your nan? Do you mind me asking?”

  “Nah, man. No big secret. My mum pissed off with some bloke when I was still a baby. Don’t even remember her. Don’t think I missed out on anything — I’ve always had Nan.”

  “She’s cool, your nan.”

  “Yeah. Daft old bitch.”

  “Do you think you should call her? Let her know you’re alright?”

  “Nah, it’s not safe to phone. They can trace them, you know. Nan’ll be alright. She’ll be cool.”

  A picture of her standing by the side of the road
as we left — was it only yesterday afternoon?—flashed into my head.

  “I heard you tell Nan about your mum,” Spider said quietly. “I’m sorry and all that.”

  “Not your fault.”

  “I know, but…”

  “Probably better off without her. She was…complicated.” I lapsed into silence. I was a liar, and I knew it. Whatever life I would have had with her, I would rather have had that — had some sort of home — than the gypsy life I’d had since she died. Nobody’s child.

  We talked on and off for hours. Our voices sounded thin in the open air, but as long as we kept going, they fended off the unknown ghosts and monsters waiting out there, in the acres of dark stretching away in every direction. The gaps between conversations got bigger as we started to drift in and out of consciousness.

  I guess I was pretty deep under when an almighty screech woke me with a start. I opened my eyes, but there was little difference: Open or closed, it was pitch-black.

  “Did you hear that?” I whispered.

  “You’d have to be dead not to hear that.”

  Whatever it was went off again, a high-pitched screaming noise tearing into the night, so loud it felt like it was all around us, on us, in us. I was wide-awake, too scared to move. Spider shifted nearer, I could hear him squirming through the leaves and stuff on the ground, smell him getting closer.

  “What do you think it is?” he said in a low voice, very near to my ear.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you believe in witches?”

  “Shut up!” Yeah, right then I believed in witches. And ghosts and werewolves and all the other things that go bump in the night.

  Another bloodcurdling screech, this time followed by a couple of loud hoots.

  “It’s an owl, Jem. I’ve never heard one before. Noisy buggers, aren’t they? Where’s a stone or something?” He sat up and rummaged around next to him, then stood up and launched something into the trees above us. I could hear it clipping the leaves and branches. A few seconds later the screeching set up again, but grew fainter and fainter as the owl went off looking for somewhere less dangerous to perch.