Foxes (15 page)

I wonder if he knows I like boys. It never really occurred to me to tell him before. It’s not like I’m ever going to be bringing anyone home with me.

“I don’t need looking after,” I murmur. “Why a pity I’m not female?”

“I’ve never had anyone.” His fingers still against my skin, and when I turn there is an expression on his face I’ve never seen before—a mixture of wistful and painful, the sort of pain you try to ignore even though it hurts so bad. “Anyone to take care of. Anyone of my own.”

I frown. He makes it sound so difficult. But it’s not the caring that’s difficult. “That’s not how it works,” I whisper, though I know I’m hardly the right person to listen to. I care and I care, but does it help? Does it change anything? Does it matter?

I want it to matter.

I
want to matter.

Micky.

I squeeze my eyes shut as my heart thuds. My stupid, traitorous heart.

“I’m sorry,” Milo says. It’s an uncharacteristic apology. “Your friend meant a lot to you, I know.” His warm hand cups my good shoulder, and it’s fucked up because Dashiel is not who I’m thinking about right now.

All I can think about is Micky.

I want to curl up and shut out the guilt that squeezes my heart until I can barely breathe.

Did he miss me yesterday? Did he care that I never turned up? Did he think of me at all?

This thought-wreck is so, so pathetic. Because I know Micky can’t possibly be having the same hopeless thoughts as me. He told me he has a “sometimes” relationship with Jack. I’m not jealous—I’m not, that would be stupid. I just don’t know if Jack would protect him, and he really needs protecting. There is something so vulnerable about him, and it’s a beautiful, precious thing. But it’s something people want to use, to take. I can’t explain how I know this. It makes me hate the idea of him out there, on the street, selling himself, being in danger. Despite his flimsy smiley façade, I know he’s too sensitive, too open. I can’t bear to see that precious thing taken from him. It will destroy him. And if that happens, then somehow I know it will destroy me too.

It’s not just that I care about him—it’s more than that, so much more. I want him to be safe at whatever cost. I would do anything.

Isn’t this exactly how I promised I wasn’t going to feel? Or worse?

Yep, this is definitely worse.

My skin prickles. I open my eyes and look up. Milo is watching me with a thoughtful expression.

“I reckon you got hit by a car trying to save a sick dog.”

I roll my eyes, a sad smile managing to curl the edges of my mouth a fraction. “Not even close,” I whisper. “Did I have my pad with me when you found me?”

Milo nods and digs around inside his jacket. “Here.” He holds it out. My heart speeds up in relief before I notice the plastic bag is gone. “First few pages and the last few are messed up, but the rest are good.”

“Did you read it?” I ask, flicking through.

“Just looked to check it was okay.”

Yeah
, I think,
of course you did
. Because obviously I wouldn’t have looked if I found Milo unconscious and carrying a handwritten notepad, would I?

IT’S NEARLY
seven by the time I’ve managed to dress myself and open a tin of ravioli. I eat half and save half to leave for the foxes.

I’m not even pretending to myself tonight. If I see Dollman, of course I’ll want to follow him, but my priority is finding Micky. And what’s even more messed up is that I imagine Dashiel telling me that’s okay.

“DANNY!”

I’m on the embankment, heading toward the address Micky gave me, when I hear the shout. I turn and see Donna running toward me. She has her shoes in her hands, her arms wide, and a wild grin on her face. At first I think she’s drunk, and I hold my good arm out, palm up to stop her crashing into me and hurting my injured shoulder. She slows before stopping in front of me. Her eyes are bright with excitement, and it makes me wonder what’s going on.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” she says breathlessly, not sounding drunk at all. “You were the one on the bridge trying to save Dieter.”

I nod, staring at my boots and feeling uncomfortable.
How does she know?
The air has turned cold enough to snow again. The pavement is a little icy. I glance up and see Vinny sitting in the bus shelter watching us, her phone to her ear. She holds her hand up and gives me a slow wave. I wave back as I look away.

Grabbing my arm, Donna tugs me toward the bus shelter.

“You’re a fucking hero, you know that?”

“What?”

“Everyone is talking about you.”

Fuck.
That’s the last thing I want.

“Why?”

I think Donna waits until I turn my head to look at her before rolling her eyes dramatically. “Did I mention you’re a fucking hero?”

“Dieter wasn’t going to jump. He slipped.”

“Christ, Danny! And by the way, we were really fucking worried about you disappearing like that.”

Donna drops her head to peer at me beneath my hair. “Are you okay?” she asks, looking serious. “I mean, Dieter is still in the hospital. Did you get hurt?”

Forgetting for a moment, I shrug. Pain shoots across my shoulder.

“Just my shoulder,” I say with a wince.

As soon as we’re within a meter of the bus shelter, Vinny gets up, phone still against her ear, and strokes her hand down my good arm. It’s brief but unexpected. We lean against the plexiglass, and Vinny does this thing with Donna where they talk to each other with their eyes.

Both of them keep touching me—a hand on my arm, my back. Several times Donna looks as though she’s only just stopping herself from pushing my hair out of my face, and she’s never done that before.

The touching is surprisingly nice, but I should really go. If Micky is working, I doubt he’ll be at the address he gave me at this time of day, but it’s not too far from here, so I’m going to try there first. I take a step away from the glass.

“Fuck!” Vinny says loudly as she finishes listening to whatever she was listening to.

Donna leans in and hugs her close.

“He’s going to do it. I know he is,” she whispers into Donna’s neck.

I stare at my feet, wondering who is going to do what. Both Donna and Vinny are wearing jeans tonight, which means Donna isn’t working either. I smile to myself. Despite the fucked-up way they met, they seem really good for each other. They want to protect each other. And maybe that’s the same thing.

Still hugging Vinny close, Donna turns to me. “Danny, do you want to come and help us find someone? This boy Vinny knows is threatening to do something stupid.”

I want to help, but…. “I need to find Micky,” I say quietly.

“He works the streets too, doesn’t he? We can look for him as well.”

I think about his address. He probably wouldn’t be there now anyway. “Okay.”

VINNY IS
distressed. Tears run down her cheeks and she grips Donna’s hand as we walk toward the park. She cries without making a sound.

My chest hurts when I look at her. “Is he missing?”

I’ve been scared to ask this for the past ten minutes. I know Donna said he was “threatening to do something stupid,” but I really need her to tell me if they even suspect he might be missing.

Instead of answering, Vinny passes me her phone. She hits a button and gestures that I listen. It’s a voice mail message.

“Listen to all of them,” she says, dragging her sleeve across her eyes.

I listen, though I can barely understand the sobbing voice making the call. He speaks so quietly, whispers he’s sorry—so, so sorry—that he can’t, just
can’t
do this anymore, and he cries and cries. He says something about going out now and not coming back, but it’s really hard to hear. The newest message is only two hours old.

I hand Vinny back her phone.

“He’s seventeen. Just a baby. Something happened a few weeks ago, and he won’t tell me what. He didn’t get out of bed for days…. I stayed with him, kept going around to the place he lived to check on him…. I thought he was doing better.”

Donna spots a few girls hanging around the gates to the park. Vinny shows them her phone. I guess she has a picture of him on it.

They shake their heads.

We head up the side of the park. I’m so cold, and my shaking is obvious. River water must have got in my blood and it’s turning it to ice.

Vinny spots a boy on his own, sitting on a bench. He has a thick coat wrapped around him and he doesn’t look like he’s on the street, but Vinny walks up to him and shows him the picture on her phone anyway.

He shrugs, disinterested.

Just as Vinny is putting the phone back in her pocket, I catch a glimpse of the screen. Any bit of warmth inside me vanishes.

“What’s his name?” I ask, my voice unsteady.

Vinny frowns at me. “Jack. I thought I said?”

No.
No, she didn’t say. She definitely didn’t say.

Jack, with hair like shadows. Micky’s friend.

“Can I borrow your phone?” I say quietly to Donna. An awful sense of urgency makes it hard to keep my hand from trembling so hard I won’t be able to hold anything with it.

She hands it to me without question.

After a couple of abortive tries with shaky fingers, I finally manage to tap in my old phone number. I hold the phone to my ear, holding my breath and hoping,
hoping
, he’s going to pick up, but instead listening to the tone ring on and on.

I tell myself it’s not unusual. If he’s working, he won’t answer. If it’s turned to silent, he just won’t hear it ringing. It doesn’t mean anything. But I’m worried—I can’t help it. Micky is close to Jack. They have a “sometimes” relationship.

I hand the phone back to Donna. The ache in my chest is getting worse by the second.

We’re a long way away from the streets we know when one of the girls Donna approaches near a Tube station tells us some distressed kid has been spotted wandering around naked near the river. She doesn’t know if it’s the boy in the photo—she didn’t see him herself. Donna and Vinny look at each other, and I know they’re thinking Jack is the kid wandering around naked.

“We should split up,” Donna says. “We’ve a better chance of finding him that way.”

One of the churches nearby strikes two. We’ve been searching for hours now. I’m so worried about Micky, I don’t know what to do but keep looking for him as we search for Jack.

Vinny and Donna decide to head toward the river, taking opposite directions, and I’m going to retrace our steps back toward the park as there’s more chance of me finding Micky in that direction.

“Meet back at mine,” Donna says before we split.

IT’S SNOWING,
and I want to run but my shoulder hurts too much, so I walk as quickly as I can. The snow falls faster and faster. It’s as though the clouds are falling apart. The world has become so small. I have this weird sensation I’m walking in a snow globe. I try to wipe the flakes off my face, but it’s coming down too fast and I give up, weighed down and heavy with it. My eyelashes stick together a little every time I blink.

When I reach the park, the grass glows whitely and all the trees have bone-white limbs. The streets are empty now—hardly any cars creep past.

I don’t know what makes me walk the opposite way to usual around the park. It’s farther from Micky’s house, but I just get a feeling I should check this way first. For Jack…? I don’t know.

I’ve hardly walked ten meters when I turn the corner and see this white heap on the edge of the pavement about fifty meters away. At first I think, “What an odd place to build a snowman,” but as I get closer, I know it’s not a snowman at all. That pale expanse of luminous white is not snow—it’s skin covered in snow. Some naked kid is sitting on the edge of the pavement, their head between their knees, arms wrapped around themselves.

I run. It’s too cold. Jack can’t be out here like this. No one should be! I wish Vinny or Donna could have been the ones to find him. He doesn’t even know me, and I don’t know what to say to him, especially if he’s upset, but I can get him somewhere warm. I have to.

I’m about ten meters away when I realize that whoever is curled up in front of me doesn’t have shadow-dark hair like Jack. They have hair like sunshine. Sunshine covered in a hundred flakes of snow.

Hair like Micky’s.

MY FEET
skid in the snow as I stop and drop down, yanking at my jumper with my good arm to get it over my head.

“Micky?” I say urgently.

But he doesn’t respond or even acknowledge he’s heard me.

I manage to rip the jumper off over my head, and… I hesitate. He’s shivering. Not as much as I am, but it means he’s not frozen to death yet. He’s completely naked. I search the pavement, but there is nothing around him: no bag, no pile of discarded clothes. His bare feet are in the gutter where the icy water is still just about flowing, but slivers of ice are forming at the edges.

I can’t really tell in the ghostly light of the streetlight, but I suspect his feet and hands are blue.

“Micky?” I say again.

Nothing.

I take a deep breath and wipe the snow from his back with my now bare arm. I feel him jump at my touch, and I lay my jumper over his back and shoulders, thankful it’s so big.

“Micky, it’s me. It’s Danny. It’s okay. I’m going to look after you. I’m going to get you somewhere warm,” I say softly, though my voice is shaking.

I have no idea where, but we need to move.

It’s so stupid, but for a second I’m scared to touch him properly. I’ve never touched anyone who’s naked like this. Biting my lip, I put my arm around him and try to drag him to his feet. It’s not easy, and Micky isn’t helping. I don’t know whether he’s semiconscious from the cold or if he’s out of it for some other reason, but he is really out of it. My injured shoulder hurts with the effort of shifting him, but I don’t care. He’s going to get fucking hypothermia if I don’t get him out of this snow. We both are. I’ve no idea how long he’s been wandering around like this or whether it’s got anything to do with Jack.