Foxes (5 page)

Tentatively I reach out and touch my fingers against his. He smiles.

A part of me wants to stay with him until Diana comes. A big part, maybe, but I can’t. I can’t let myself. This already hurts. I don’t know why, but it does.

I didn’t mean to get close to this kid, but for a few hours I’ve been closer to him than I’ve been to anyone for weeks. It’s stupid and pointless. This kid needs to be off the streets. He doesn’t need anything but that. And I need to be back in my shell, wrapped in my blankets, asleep.

My legs are shaky when I get up.

“Dytryk,” he says quietly.

Diitrik.
He hasn’t said a word since last night, but now he splays his palm out over his heart.

“Dytryk,” he says again. He says other things I don’t understand.

I sit back down on the bench.
I have to go
, I think.
I should go.

But I don’t.

DAWN BLAZES
fiercely across the rooftops. My eyes are open but I’m a long way off. Dytryk leans against my side. I suspect he’s sleeping again. Every so often he shifts and makes small sighing noises that despite everything make me want to smile.

I think of Micky, and I like the way my heart beats faster. I wish I didn’t. I have to think of him in abstracts—legs, eyes, smile, teeth, hair—otherwise my stupid hormones start to make everything a lot more complicated. Everything seems so complicated anyway.

Freak.

My eyes snap open.

Three boys with dark smiles shift lazily from foot to foot in front of me, their faces mostly shadowed by hoods.

My heart lurches.

I must have dozed off. I never just doze off, though. I never sleep anywhere but in my nest. It’s not safe. When you sleep you become an easy target. The proof is standing right in front of me.

My chest tightens as I notice the warm body pressed against me, the impossibly reassuring thump of someone else’s heart against my side.

Dytryk shifts, and lifts his head from my shoulder. He sees them. I feel him tense, hear his breathing get faster. I miss his small warmth, and I want to grab him before he moves away, pull him close to protect him.

“We haven’t got anything,” I say, forcing the words out and keeping my head down.

I’m too obviously scared. I know it. They know it.

Dytryk feels like a coiled spring. He pushes himself as close to me as he can. I sit forward so he can shift behind me. I feel him grip my wet jumper in his fists.

The middle boy shrugs, his hands sunk deep in the pockets of his jeans, and he raises his eyebrow. “Freak says he hasn’t got anything,” he says, turning to his friends. “Don’t think he knows what we want, though.”

The boy’s stare is his challenge. I hold his gaze for maybe a second before I look away. I push my nails into my palm—I wanted to keep looking at him. Now he’s going to think I’ve given in; he’s going to think I’m ready to get on my knees when I’m not—I’m just scared. But being scared doesn’t mean I’ll do anything he asks. It doesn’t mean I won’t fight like hell to protect the boy hiding behind me if I have to. Milo once told me that being scared is just being scared. It doesn’t mean you’re weak—it means you’re alive.

I lift my eyes to meet the boy’s stare. He looks younger than me… a little fish wishing he were a bigger one. A little fish trying to assert a bit of control over someone else for no other reason than to show he can. They don’t want to rob us. They must see we have nothing.

The longer I stare at Fish Boy, the more details of his skin fill my head. I want to write everything down. To map out what is happening so I can see it clearly. But I can’t write anything down right now. And nothing is clear.

Even if I try to convince myself these boys just want to intimidate us, it doesn’t stop my stomach churning. It doesn’t stop my body shaking more from fear than from cold.

I don’t think I’ve ever been as cold as I am right now.

Fish Boy steps forward. “Your face is fucked up,” he states. He pushes my head back so he can stare at me. His hand is icy on my forehead. As soon as he touches me, I close my eyes. I feel poised and hyperaware. Terrified, yet ready.

Footsteps echo behind us. Someone else approaching. Dytryk’s fingers grip my skin, not just my jumper now, and the pain makes me feel balanced on the edge of a knife. Footstep after footstep, like a countdown to something.

I doubt it’s my guardian angel. After all the shit that’s happened, I kinda doubt I have one of those. Maybe Dytryk has one, though. I hear the jingle of keys. Fish Boy’s hand on me vanishes. I open my eyes, startled to see him backing up, glancing at his friends before they turn and run, chased off by nothing more than a stranger getting into his car, his mobile phone pressed to his ear.

I sink forward, my head between my knees, trembling.

DIANA ARRIVES
half an hour later. She has her key in the restaurant door before she notices us.

“Oh, sweetheart! What on earth are you doing out here at this time of day?” she calls.

Diana’s voice is like a vat of honey. I could listen to her talk all day. She’s from Trinidad via Edinburgh, and her accent seems to draw together the best of both and make them into something more.

When I don’t respond, Diana sashays across the street and pauses in front of us, hands on her ample hips. The bright green of her headscarf hurts my eyes and I squint. She doesn’t look like she should be called Diana—it’s far too ordinary. She looks like an African queen, the ruler of a country.

“Why do I get the feeling you been waiting for me? Hmm? You’re both soaked through! Tell me you’ve not been out all night in that rain?”

I feel Dytryk shrink away. Diana can seem pretty intimidating. Everything about her is loud and bright, from her violent green headscarf—that does sort of match her brightly patterned wrap dress—to her shiny purple flip-flops. But she has the biggest heart. She’d take care of the whole world if she could.

I shrug in response, though I immediately regret it from the look on her face.

Convincing Diana that I am not sleeping rough is a regular thing. Although she never quizzes me directly, I don’t think she believes I’m quite old enough—or perhaps capable enough—to be on my own. It’s one of the reasons I try not to visit her restaurant more than once a week. As it is, she insists on finding jobs for me and then paying me in food, and I know she can’t have that many jobs that need doing.

However much shit I get because of the fucked-up scars on my face, I know some people just feel sorry for me. And however much I hate the name-calling, the laughter, the avoidance, the knowing someone is never going to look at me and fall in love, pity is worse. It’s like the universe acknowledging all the things I’m scared of about myself are true. They pity me because they’re so fucking glad they’re not me.

Diana means well. I know she means well. This still makes me uncomfortable, though.

“Dytryk,” I say, elbowing him gently, which, to my embarrassment, only causes him to bury his face in my neck.

Diana turns and sashays back across the road. “Come on, with me,” she calls over her shoulder.

We get up and follow her to the restaurant door, where she fiddles around with her enormous bunch of keys.

Dytryk appears as fascinated as I am by those keys. I’ve no idea why she has so many of them, or why she has the feathers and beads and what looks like a small dried snake all tangled up on her keyring. With that stuff in the way, it’s near impossible to fit her key in the lock. But she does. Eventually.

WE WARM
up in the small kitchen at the very back of the restaurant. Diana motions us to stand near the cooker as she heats up some milk. Everything in here is spotless, from the huge shining steel pans hung in neat rows from metal hooks on the ceiling to the red-tiled floor. I stare at the shallow puddle of rainwater pooling around Dytryk’s feet and watch as it merges with the puddle around my feet. My sleeve drips as I shake—I can’t seem to stop.

“You promised me, sweetheart,” Diana mutters, shaking her head as she carefully pours the milk into two tall glasses.

She hands them to us and gestures for us to drink before she takes the pan over to the sink.

I get the feeling she’s annoyed with me. I glance over at Dytryk. His hands tremble as he puts the glass against his lips and inhales the steam.

“Couldn’t leave him.”

Diana sighs.

“I’ve brought him to you.” I push on, wondering if it would be easier to get my pad out and write down what I want to say.

“To me?” She turns and waits until I look up. “Sweetheart, what do you think I’m going to
do
with him?”

“Last year…. The kid on Oxford Street….”

She rolls her eyes at the ceiling. “Lord, give me strength,” she mutters. “I see kids every day, and none of them should be on the street. I wish they weren’t. I’m terrified for them. You know how many calls I’ve made to either the police or social services? You know how many times I’ve been fobbed off and told to give out the information of the nearest shelter? They’re overstretched and I’m not a social worker. I run a restaurant. That kid last year needed to be hospitalized, unfortunately. Or maybe fortunately—that worked in his favor.” She pulls a face and turns around to wash the pan. “The one kid I want off the streets is you, but you don’t want my help, do you?”

“I’m not a kid.” I glance at Dytryk. He has the half-empty glass pressed to his cheek, his eyes closed. “Please.”

With a tea towel in one hand and the clean pan in the other, she looks Dytryk up and down.

“Dytryk?” she says to him.

His eyes spring wide and he glances at me before he nods. The wary look he had last night is back.

“I’m Diana,” she says gently. “How old are you, sweetheart?”

Dytryk looks back at me again.

“How long have you been out on the streets?” she asks. “Did you run away from home?”

I shrug. I don’t think he understands.

Diana sighs again.

“Take him through to the restaurant while I make the call. And take the electric heater with you.”

THE RESTAURANT
is narrow and cozy. I take Dytryk over to a small table in front of the window. Diana’s chairs have nice cushiony seats that are thankfully plastic and won’t be ruined by us sitting on them in our soggy clothes.

I plug the heater in next to Dytryk, making sure it’s not so close he’s going to drip on it, and take out my pad.

The clock on the wall says just after nine. I don’t know if I have the energy to walk home, get dry, and then walk back in to meet Micky at noon. Especially as I still don’t know what I’m going to say to him. I think about just walking home after this and not meeting Micky, but that just makes me feel queasy and sort of wrong. It’s not his fault I broke his phone.

I doodle a few sharks around the notes I made last night. Dytryk watches.

A FEW
minutes later, the door to the kitchen swings open and Diana beckons me over. “I told them he was thirteen. Whether he is or not, that seemed to help spur them into action.” She sighs, a sort of despairing look on her face. “They’re sending someone over. Should only be a couple of hours…. Why don’t you stay and wait with him, sweetheart?”

I know what she’s trying to do. I shake my head. I should go.

Dytryk is watching our conversation. I walk back over to him and stand in front of his table. I hold up my hand and do a slow wave. He mirrors the gesture, but he looks sad.

“Good-bye,” I say and swallow.

He nods.

I look back at him one more time. In my head I’m taking notes I will write down later. I won’t forget him.

“BOO!”

I jump. Literally. Right out of the doorway of the café.

My heart flutters frantically in my chest, as though I’ve been zapped by a stray bolt of lightning.

“And I thought a supervillain would be immune to being snuck up on and surprised,” Micky says, leaning in close and wearing a smile as bright as the midday sun.

I try and fix my gaze on something other than the sharpness of his teeth.

He’s all fox today. So alive and full of energy, even though his lips are blue and he’s bouncing on his toes, hugging his arms around his chest.

This time he’s wearing thin leggings that cling to his long legs and a long-sleeved T-shirt that’s so loose that the wind must bite at his skin beneath it. He’s surely colder than I am.

He’s so real it’s hard to breathe.

“What are you doing standing out here?” he asks with a puzzled smile. “You looked like you’d gone to sleep standing up.”

I shake my head. I wasn’t sleeping. What I was doing was standing in the doorway, spacing out. I have no money on me to buy anything from the café and my whole body is a trembling jumble of sleepless wreck. If I sat down in the doorway, the café manager would come out and glare at me until I moved off. She’s done it before. The best option was for me to stand here and look like I was waiting for someone. And now that someone’s here, looking more himself than any image my brain can manage to conjure up—and it’s conjured up a few.

I draw my eyebrows together, unable to stop myself wondering if Micky would feel as warm as Dytryk had, pressed against my side.

It’s as though all my thoughts are scattered today. Or maybe it’s just my brain that’s been disconnected. From reality. Sleeplessness will do that.

I glance at the clock through the café window. It’s exactly noon.

Micky seems to know what I’m thinking and smiles. “Punctuality and sneaking up on people—they’re my superpowers.” He glances down at his falling-apart trainers. When he looks up, his smile makes him glow a little. “All the interesting superpowers were taken. I think the supervillains got there before me.”

He catches my eye and winks. I lose all coherent thought. My heart isn’t just beating fast, it’s beating loud and my blood is singing. Every part of my body has become alert: erect and paying attention.