Foxes (6 page)

I’m such a fucking loser. I hate my stupid hormones. If he knew, he’d be gone in a blink.

“Come on, I’ll buy you a hot drink. You look frozen,” he says, pushing open the café door.

A blissful wave of heat escapes. The smell of toast makes my mouth water, all salt and smoke.

I shake my head. “I haven’t fixed your phone,” I say.

“Oh, okay,” he says, letting the café door close. If I wasn’t watching him so closely, I wouldn’t notice it, but I am, and I can see he actually deflates a little. His shoulders sag and he doesn’t stand as tall.

Biting his lip, he pulls my Frankenstein out of some secret pocket under his top and holds it out. “You probably want this back, right?”

I push my phone back to him, making sure I only touch the phone and not his nail-bitten fingers. His hands look so pale with cold that I have the urge to take them in mine and warm them. “Keep it for now.” Micky frowns. He doesn’t put my phone back in his secret pocket—he just holds it. “You’re soaked,” he says, staring at my sleeve.

“I’m going to go get warm now.”

I feel bad that his bright happy grin of moments ago is gone, his glow vanished. I’ve burst his happy mood like a pin in a balloon. I want to tell him I’m sorry: I’m sorry for being a creep, I’m sorry for my stupid hormones, I’m sorry he makes my heart beat faster, and I’m sorry for breaking his phone.

“Tomorrow, then?” he says.

I nod, though I’ve no idea if I can find a replacement phone for him by tomorrow. And replacing his phone is what I need to do.

Before I left her kitchen this morning, Diana gave me a hot-water bottle. I pull it out from underneath my jumper. It’s still quite warm. “You need this more than I do,” I say.

Micky raises his eyebrow, and a faint amused smile flickers across his lips, though it vanishes pretty fast.

He dips his head to look at me beneath my hair. His eyes are the underwater color of the blue tiles in my shell. “It’s keeping you warm,” he says. “I’m fine, really.”

I pull a face at my heavy boots. Micky’s legs are trembling. He’s not fine,
really
. He’s freezing.

“Give it to someone else if you don’t want it. I don’t want to carry it anymore.” I hold the hot-water bottle out. When he doesn’t take it, I bend down and lay it on the ground.

Micky picks it up even though he looks like he doesn’t want to.

With a frown he hugs it to his chest. I wish I could make him smile, not frown.

I’m sorry
, I think.

THE WALK
back to my shell is not one I remember. My feet are numb, my legs are numb, my fingers ache. I’m made entirely of half-set cement. All I can concentrate on is putting one foot in front of the other.

As soon as I’ve closed the door to the shower room, I strip. It’s hard going—my fingers don’t work and I can hardly feel what I’m doing. Sunshine flickers against the tiles and more than once I find myself distracted, mesmerized by the light. I kick my heavy boots off and throw my wet clothes in one of the sinks.

Then I stop and take a deep breath.

I like being naked. All loose and unweighted. Free somehow. What I’m free of, I don’t know—more than just my clothes, though. I stretch my arms out, tilt my head back, and close my eyes.

For the first time in hours, I relax.

I like to sleep naked and covered by enough warm blankets that I am never cold. The room is cold, though. When I open my eyes, I can see my breath in the air. For a second I’m so tired, I just stand there naked and swaying, little clouds of warm air puffing out of my mouth. My skin is paler than icy snow. Warming up is going to hurt.

Bending down, I grab a fleecy blanket to wrap around myself. I intend to boil some water on my stove to drink and help me warm up inside, but as soon as the blanket touches my shoulders, I can do nothing but fall into my nest, press my face into the softness, close my eyes, and sleep.

I dream of rain. I dream of a warm body pressed close, another heart beating in time with my own. I dream of blond hair and bitten nails.

THE SKY
is a thousand shades of blue. It makes the room even bluer in the low light. I’m in my nest, half-asleep, half-awake, staring out the window when I hear the snuffling. It sounds like dogs, but strays never come this near the swimming pool—it’s as if they can sense us living here. I get up. Frost has covered the world in silver glitter and it sparkles in the last of the daylight. It must have gotten cold today, colder than it was last night. But however cold it is, it doesn’t matter right now—it’s beautiful.

I drag a blanket tight around my shoulders as I lean out the window and peer down at the ground below. My eyes widen when I see them. A mother and two cubs.

She stops, peers up at me, and sniffs the air. I hold my breath, transfixed. Her coat is so bright against the frost. The cubs by her side are young and full of barely suppressed energy. It’s been so long since I’ve seen a fox.

We regard one another. I smile at her, still holding my breath, then she trots off into the dark down the side of the building with the cubs following.

Quietly I close the window. I think about leaving some food out for her tomorrow, then lie down in my nest and fall back to sleep. This time no dreams capture me at all.

A FEW
hours later, I’m sitting on the edge of the swimming pool, swinging my legs. The sky is clear, the moon is half-full and shining through the broken roof lights. Everything has a weird, deformed shadow tonight. I’ve even pinched myself a couple of times to check I’m really awake. Sometimes I come and sit out here by the empty pool. If I close my eyes, I can imagine what the place must have looked like before it was forgotten, before it fell apart.

Unsteady footsteps crunch across the mix of weeds and gravel outside. In a few seconds, the plywood panel we use as a door will creak open and Milo will stumble in. He has a very distinctive, drunken stagger that my ears would recognize anywhere.

“Hey, kiddo.”

I can smell the alcohol on him from across the pool. Strong alcohol. Spirits. The sort of stuff that strips the skin from your mouth and throat as you swallow.

He must have been out along the high road. He’s a local celebrity out there. Him, and his leg, and his stories.

“Hey,” I say.

I hold my breath as he makes his way around the edge of the pool. At times like these, I wish the pool were full of water.

“Not moping, I hope, eh?” He collapses down next to me.

I shake my head.

Nearby, in the park, kids are running through the darkness. Laughter and yelling, both terrified and exhilarated, echo in the empty spaces.

Sometimes I run through the dark. Sometimes it just feels like that’s what I’m doing. It’s all a game to the kids out there. I hope it never becomes anything else.

“None of my business, but where’ve you been going at night lately?” Milo asks.

I smile a little to myself. We keep out of each other’s business mostly. Occasionally Milo will know someone who needs a phone fixed, but not very often.

I think he might be worrying about me.

I think I might like it. Not that he’s worried, just that he cares. It makes me feel like there is still something holding me here, like a warm hand clasping mine, preventing me from flying off into the unknowable unknown.

“Embankment, mostly.”

“New friend, eh?” Milo says, nudging me with his elbow. He tries to wink but ends up squinting.

With a dramatic flourish, he produces a little bottle out of his jacket, takes a swig, and offers it to me.

I shake my head. “Is it mouthwash?” It smells like mouthwash. I wouldn’t put it past Milo to drink mouthwash.

Milo snorts. “Put hair on your chest, this will.”

I roll my eyes. “I already have hairs on my chest.”

“So why are you all mopey? You got hairs on your chest, you got the world in your pocket.”

I don’t know what’s got Milo so happy.

“I’m not mopey.”

But I am.
I don’t want to admit why, but I am.

The world is certainly not in my pocket.

DOLLMAN IS
early. It’s midnight, and I’m leaning over the embankment wall, staring at the London Eye and all the lights reflected on the river, when I glimpse him striding purposefully through the darkness.

Tonight the streets don’t glitter too brightly. It’s windy and cold and hardly anyone is around, but at least it’s not raining.

I follow Dollman up past the bus shelter where I first saw Micky. Tonight the bus shelter is empty. It’s stupid, but I start to feel a little sick if I think about Micky being out here. I don’t feel so good anyway. I’m tired and I’ve been thinking too much about Dashiel. I didn’t want to get out of my nest to hunt sharks tonight. I wanted to stay wrapped up in my memories. But while I lay there all safe, I kept thinking about the sharks swimming these streets. I kept thinking about Dytryk and others like him who don’t have the choice to curl up and try to shut out the darkness.

“Loki!”

My heart sinks and I screw my face up, but I keep walking. Laughter echoes from behind me, down near the railway arches, along with a few shaky, wolflike howls.

“LokiLokiLokiLoki!”

Louder this time.

And even though I’ve been careful and Dollman must be a hundred meters in front of me, he pauses in his steps.

Shit.

I stop and press myself into the shadows of some bargain-booze store, wishing Dieter would keep his bloody mouth shut.

Behind me I hear the clatter of footsteps. I don’t turn. I know it’s Dieter in his plasticky high heels. I can see his gangly reflection in a window across the street. Another boy is with him. It’s not Micky. Dieter is never on his own, though—he always has someone. Even if it’s not the someone he wants.

“Are you lost, Loki? A little lost puppy. Are you following someone home?” Dieter asks in a singsong voice, stepping closer than I’d like him to. He sounds high or drunk. The boy with him giggles.

Dollman moves on again, getting farther and farther away, but I can still just about make out his tall shadow. I push off from the wall and start walking, wondering how many times Dieter can stop me following this guy.

“Are you missing your dead friend, Loki? Are you trying to find another friend, Loki?”

More laugher, wilder this time.

I shove my hands in my pockets and walk faster, wishing I were far, far away.

Dieter’s words don’t cut through me so much as completely drain me of energy. They make me want to just sit down, curl up, and breathe. Just breathe.

I don’t know how Dieter can say it like that—“your dead friend”—as if he didn’t know Dashiel at all. As if Dashiel meant nothing to him. When everything in my head makes sense, I sometimes think I can see why Dieter hates me so much. I’ve become a focus for how much he’s hurting. But mostly nothing makes sense. And being the focus of someone else’s pain fucking sucks.

I break into a run before I reach the park, scared I’m going to lose my shark. I want to know where he lives. I want to follow him home. I want to tether him to something so he can’t fade in and out of view like he does, like all the sharks do, so I need to try harder, do better. This is important.

This is all that’s important… or all that should be.

Of the five sharks Dashiel told me about, I’ve only seen two, and one of my own. But there are more, far more out there.

A few girls huddle beneath the ancient trees, just in sight of the road that curves around the park and just out of sight of the streetlights. I only know they’re there because I know where to look. It’s cold and the pavements are unsheltered, and that is where they stand to take a break.

I’m not trying to search Donna out—I’d really rather not see anyone who knows me right now—but I do glance around to see if she’s there as I hurry past.

Thankfully, she’s not.

Dollman turns his head a few times, as if he’s checking whether anyone is following. This is new. Perhaps he’s feeling paranoid tonight. Maybe Dieter’s shouting spooked him. He hasn’t stopped to speak to anyone since I’ve been following him, but then, I’ve not seen any boys on the streets tonight—apart from Dieter and his friend.

I keep on the grass at the edge of the park, in the shadow of the trees. The moon bathes the middle of the park in silver light, but I don’t let it touch me.

I follow Dollman all the way to Edgware Road. It’s nearly a mile. As he turns down windy little street after windy little street, with expensive mews houses on either side, I get this excited feeling in my chest that’s not quite terror, not quite anticipation. Finally I feel like a hunter.

But as soon as I think that, questions begin to fill my head, making it hard for me to think straight. Where is he going? Home? If he’s the killer—is this where he brings his victims? My stomach tightens and twists inside me. I touch my pad, feeling its heaviness in my pocket and wishing I could write all this down. Make sense of it. But I can’t. Instead I need to focus on why I’m doing this. Why I have to be strong enough.

We come to a dead-end cul-de-sac. I need to hang back or figure out a way of making myself invisible.

After picking up his pace for a few meters, Dollman stops outside a small square building that looks like a converted warehouse. He does it so suddenly that, in an effort to keep out of sight, I collide with a small tree in a pot outside someone’s front door. I grip the tree in my arms to stop it from falling over and watch as Dollman silently ascends a short metal staircase to the front door. A few seconds later, the door swings inward and he steps inside.

He’s gone.

A muffled
thunk
sounds as the door closes.

For almost a full minute, I keep my arms around the tree and don’t move. I don’t want to mess this up, don’t want there to be any chance Dollman will see me. I can imagine him being paranoid enough to be looking out of the windows to make sure he’s not been followed. I know I would if I had something to hide. Also, I kind of like the smell of the tree and the feel of its thick waxy leaves on my skin. If I close my eyes, I can almost imagine cool hands touching me.