Invisible Girl (7 page)

“T
a-daah!” squeals Henny, jumping out of a dark doorway, throwing her arms open wide. “First rule, kitten, be careful who you trust, especially with your stuff.”

She hands me my bag. My eyes brim over with tears, which I wipe on my sleeve as we walk along silently, sharing chips that stick in my throat like twigs.

“Are you angry with me?” she laughs. “Didn’t scare you, kitten, did I?”

“No!” I lie. “I’m not a baby! I knew you hadn’t gone! Not really!”

I stuff more chips in my mouth, kick a stone and practise that poem about the dead soldier we had to learn for English, over and over inside my head.

After a while we come to this huge multi-storey car park. Henny drags me inside to find a huddle of kids laughing and cheering at three boys racing shopping trolleys up and down. “Whhhoooooooooooo!” squeals one of the boys, skidding his trolley in and out of the cars.

“Ekkkkkkkkkkkkk,” screeches another, almost scratching the side of a big blue truck.

A girl with a ghost-white face wearing a jumper too thick for this weather starts chanting, “DARE! DARE! DARE!”

The other kids join in. “DARE! DARE! DARE!”

A boy with bristly, short-cropped hair pushes his trolley faster and faster, the little wheels rattling and skidding on the concrete, his pumps beating the ground so fast. He scoops his body low, then springs up quick and lands inside the trolley on his knees, holding his hands up high in the air, wiggling his bum and singing, “La la lala, la la lala, la lala, lalalala!” He skitters and bounces along, heading for a huge black shiny car.

“DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!” they all chant.

He grins, his eyes twinkling as he smashes into the side of the car, flying out of the trolley with a triumphant whoop, landing on the ground with a thump. Everyone goes crazy, clapping and whooping, cheering and laughing. He jumps up, dusts himself down and bows.

“Evening entertainment,” says Henny, nudging me.

I’m so tired, my arms and legs feel as if they’re draining away like bath water. But my mind’s buzzing, on hyper alert like a bee. Henny walks over to the smashed car and runs her hand along its graze.

We head off in a huddle of hands and feet and flapping jackets. Boys making rude gestures with their fingers at passing cars, girls rolling their eyes. My arm brushes Henny’s as we walk, making a warm loop of something swoop inside me.

“Rule number two,” says Henny, sternly, pointing to the cigarettes and drink that some of the others are holding, “don’t even think about touching any of that. Out of bounds for you, kitten.”

“Don’t worry,” I say, shrugging her off. “I’m not that stupid. I wouldn’t touch that stuff anyway.”

Some of the boys kick dead cans along the road, shouting, pushing each other off the kerb, waggling their pink tongues at passersby who keep their eyes down low.

We huddle in a back alley, the noise of the city thundering around us. The girl in the big jumper sits next to me on the kerb. She pulls a thread on her jeans; she licks her finger and rubs at a grey patch on her shoe.

“Hi,” she says. “I’m Tia.”

“Hello,” I say. “D’you know someone called Beckett? He’s got brown curly hair. He’s nineteen and I really need to find him.”

She shakes her head, picks at her fingernails and shrugs.

We sit for ages, just staring into space, with farting and joking from the boys swirling around us like fog. I can’t stop thinking about Connor and the little girl and Mum. I can’t stop wondering about Beckett. If only I had the photo, maybe someone would recognise him.

“You sure you don’t know someone called Beckett?” I yawn. “Really sure?”

Tia shakes her head.

“He’s lived here for ages,” I say. “You
must
have seen him somewhere.”

She laughs, burrowing a finger through a loopy hole in the wool of her jumper.

We wander in our huddle for days, sleeping in the shadows with my heart beating hard on my ribs, invisible to everyone around. Time loops and stretches like Tia’s jumper wool, with the days and the night-times fraying and blurring at the seams. Most days I go into the Cathedral and watch the candles flickering and the stained-glass windows reflecting on my hands. Most nights I slide closer to Tia and dream of tall houses with plush carpets and shiny kitchens and cotton-soft beds.

And then one night, the air around us sucks tight.

“Quick,” says Henny, tugging Tia and me, pulling us up. “Stay close to me, OK?”

I lug my bag on to my back and run with the rumble of feet through the streets. It’s really late; people are everywhere, spilling from pubs with beer breath and loud laughs, running for buses. The thrum of the city pulses in my ears and bangs my body like a drum.

“Where are we going?” I ask Henny.

Henny shrugs. “Dunno.”

Round the corner one of the boys starts dancing and whooping, flipping his stringy body around, leaping through the air like lightning. Everyone’s clapping and calling out.

“Who’s bored?” he taunts, pulling a big metal bar from his bag, waving it in the air, his eyes flashing red with danger. The air crackles with excitement, everyone holding their breath, waiting to see what the boy will do.

He swings the metal bar high and smashes it against a shop front. A huge crack snakes across the window. He bashes it over and over, laughing out loud as a million sparkles of glass scatter at his feet like diamonds. A shrill alarm bell drills through my ears; people scatter like the glass, everything shining with panic.

“Quick,” says Henny, yanking on my bag, “go on! Get what you can!”

She pushes me into the deep flood of kids running into the shop. I’m trembling so much; the knot in my tummy is twisting and pulling me back to her, like she’s some safe harbour to tie myself on to.

“I can’t, Henny,” I say. “It’s too scary!”

“You have to,” she says. “The cops’ll be here soon, just get what you can.”

I run into the shop, blindly grabbing at the bright sweets and crisps and drinks and shiny magazines that slither and slide in my hands. The boy is a frenzy of smashing, blindly bashing anything in front of him. He grabs a handful of newspapers, scrunches them up, strikes a match and throws it on the paper. Orange flames rise up, licking hungrily, grabbing everything they pass with their long, scorching fingers.

The sound of the nee-nawing police-car sirens comes closer, flashing their lights, turning the whole world blue. And everyone but the boy and me starts running. I stand there, frozen, watching the thick black smoke swirling around me, filling my lungs with fear.

“Quick,” calls Henny. “Gabriella, come on!”

My feet won’t move. The boy’s golden eyes are as wild as the fire.

“I said, come on!” Henny shouts, running in and dragging me out by my sleeve. “You wanna get caught?”

Outside the air is electric, kids scattering like skittles, making faces at the police, running faster than the wind. Henny and me run, our Converse pounding the streets until our feet are stinging and raw. Round the corner and down a back alley, Henny and me climb these cold metal steps that cling to the side of a massive old warehouse. They go on for years, a zigzag of black pencil lines reaching right up to the sky.

“Where are we going, Henny?” I ask.

“Somewhere.”

“But where? Where are we?”

“You ask too many questions,” Henny snaps. “Just trust me, OK!”

T
he top of the metal staircase opens out on to a wide flat roof. Loads of kids are up there already, some of them dancing to loud music that’s blaring from some speakers.

“You OK?” asks Tia, sipping Coke from a can.

I nod but inside I’m jittering like mad.

“What did you get?”

I look down at my hands. I feel in my pockets.

“I dropped most of it while I was running,” I say, holding out a few chocolate bars and a can of Fanta. “It’s really hard with my backpack.”

“Share-sies,” says Henny, holding her hand out.

I hand her a few bars and snap open the Fanta to share. We stand there looking up at the bright moon hanging over us like a huge white bauble on a Christmas tree.

“Bedtime for you, kitten,” she says.

I’m not listening to Henny. She’s not the boss of me, but I’m tired so I find a quiet place to wee, then clean my teeth with a minuscule blob of toothpaste and screw the lid back on tight. I make a pillow with my jumper, loop my arm through my backpack straps and lie down. I try to lie still, but I can’t stop wriggling around. And every time I let myself drop into that safe black place of sleep my tummy clenches up quick, my eyes flick open wide, and my brain starts buzzing like a bee.

I watch the other kids dancing and everyone sipping and smoking and joking. I think about Grace, all tucked up safe and warm in her bed with the corner of her page turned over and a glass of water on her bedside.

This is my life now.

And it’s a thousand years from home.

I watch the dark clouds drifting across the moon and remember when Dad and me watched for the solar eclipse from the window. I keep my eyes on Tia, huddled in the corner, gnawing the sleeve of her too-big jumper and I can’t remember what day it is because everything’s blurred into one. Is it Sunday tomorrow or Monday? Or Friday?

The flat concrete roof is too hard to get comfy on and although it’s still warm from daytime sunshine, cool gusts of air breeze over me like ghosts. I shiver and think of my bed. I dig my hand deep inside my backpack and hold on to Blue Bunny’s ear. I stroke its silky softness between my finger and my thumb and see Beckett’s name in biro in my mind. Cars and buses screech in the distance, rumbling through the night. Police cars and ambulances and fire engines rip up the sky with their sirens and turn the white moon blue. I wish Tia would come and be near me. I wish someone would hold my hand.

I tear open a KitKat and nibble off the chocolate around the edge. I don’t mind about my teeth. They can get all covered in plaque and rot away. See if I care. I munch into the wafer then let it go soggy and melt on my tongue. I jangle the money in my pocket without making a sound.

I think about Dad.

I think about Mum.

I think about that boy Connor and that girl Jayda and think how funny it is that they look like me. I eat a Twix and take another sip of Fanta.

How can I find Beckett? I close my eyes and search inside for a special super power that will miraculously magic him here. I whizz through the tunnels of my veins, in and out of my muscles, all through my body and find the magic tucked deep inside my heart. I concentrate hard so it builds stronger and brighter inside me. I imagine the picture of Beckett and watch it slip and slide through my thoughts, blurring and reshaping through the years until I can see his nineteen-year-old face. He’s standing somewhere in Manchester, or sleeping in a bed on a cotton-soft pillow. I send out my silver super-power searchlight and watch it shine from my heart, zooming through the city, in and out of the houses, up and down the roads, searching for him, until the whole of Manchester is shimmering.

My eyes are burning like mad with being awake for so long. I rummage in my bag for my sketchbook and pens and under the light of the bluish moon I draw the huge warehouse building and the boy dancing and the flames licking his shoes. I draw the black metal steps zigzagging up to the clouds. I draw Henny’s pink hair. I draw Tia, as small and skinny as a skeleton, and make her jumper even huger so it trails right down to the ground, catching the leaves as she walks. A few other kids give up dancing and huddle in shabby heaps around me, sniffing and scuffling. I make my eyes big to keep them open until they sting like crazy. And when I can’t draw or chew or sip or keep them open any longer I close my eyes.

Much later, when the morning sun spills pink on the sky, Henny comes and lies close by me.

“Henny!” I whisper. “Where’s the boy?”

She cuddles herself with her long stringy arms and yawns.

“Probably wanted a bed for the night,” she whispers. “And a meal. Trouble is, I think he went a bit too far. He might get sent down for arson.”

“Henny?” I whisper. “What’s arson?”

“Sssshhhhh,” she says, touching her finger gently on my lips.