Vicky Angel (2 page)

“Grow
up,
Vicky!”

“Who wants to grow up?” she cries

I
can't take it in. It's not happening. It's some crazy dream. All I need do is blink and I'll wake up in bed and I'll tell Vicky.

Vicky Vicky Vicky Vicky Vicky

I'm running to her.

She's lying in front of the car, facedown. Her long red hair is hiding her. I kneel beside her and touch her hand.

“Vicky?”

“Do you know her? Oh God, is she…?”

It's the driver, a man in a gray suit with a gray face. He's sweating with shock. He bends too, and then tries to lift her.

“Don't touch her!” I can't bear his hands on her but he misunderstands.

“Yes, of course, she might have spinal injuries. Oh God, I can't believe it. I was just driving along—I was going slowly, only about twenty, if that, but she just ran straight in front of me—”

“Call an ambulance!”

“Yes! Yes, a phone—” he looks round wildly. “My mobile's in the car—”

“It's all right, we've dialed 999,” says a woman, running out of a house. She puts her arm round me.

“Are you all right, dear? Come in the house with me—”

“No, I have to stay with Vicky.” I can't talk properly. My teeth are chattering. Why is it so cold? I look down at Vicky. Her hand is warm but I rip off my school blazer and tuck it round her.

“The ambulance should be here soon. Here soon. Soon,” the woman says, like she's a stuck record. She gives a little jerk. “And the police.”

“The police?” the driver gasps. “It was a complete accident. She stepped right in front of my car. I couldn't help hitting her. You saw, didn't you?”

She saw. There are more people now. They all saw. They saw me, they saw Vicky.

Vicky. I brush her hair back with my shaky hand. Her face is turned sideways. It looks just the same—not a mark. Her mouth could almost be smiling. She has to be all right. This is one of Vicky's little games. She'll sit up in a second and scream with laughter.

“Got you! Had you all fooled. You thought I was dead!” That's what she'll say. I give her shoulder a little shake to encourage her.

“Don't!” says the woman. “Let the poor lamb lie.”

The driver kneels beside Vicky. He doesn't try to touch her this time but he hangs his head over hers.

“Is she breathing?” he whispers.

“Of course she's breathing!” I say. “She's not
really
hurt. She can't be. There isn't any blood.”

This is just a crazy freak accident. Any minute now Vicky will open her eyes.

Wake up, Vicky.

Wake up, Jade, and find you're dreaming. No, rewind. Back a minute, two minutes, that's all. Back to Vicky laughing at me and then—and then and then and then …

… and then I laugh back and we link arms and walk home, happy and silly and safe together.

“Vicky,” I whisper, and I'm crying, nose running as well as my eyes, but what does it matter? “Vicky. Oh, Vicky.”

I want to tell her so much but the driver is here, these women are crowding round—and there's a siren, the ambulance is here too. More people, someone helping me up, though I don't want to move. I have to stay with Vicky.

They're moving her, sliding her onto a stretcher, and her arm is limp, her legs drag a little, but she's all in one piece, no broken bits, no marks, she has to be all right….

“Is she dead?” the woman whispers.

“She's breathing,” says the ambulance woman. “Thank God, thank God,” says the driver.

But they're mumbling something, there are more sirens, police, a policeman's talking to me, but I can see Vicky being lifted up into the ambulance.

“I've got to go with her! I must!” I shout, pushing people out of the way.

The policeman is still asking me questions.
Who is she? Were you with her? Did you see exactly what happened?
But I can't think, I can't talk, I can only say one word.

“Vicky!”

“She's suffering from shock. We need to take her to hospital and check her over. You'll have to talk to her later,” says the ambulance woman, and she helps me up beside Vicky in the van. Her colleague is examining Vicky, listening, looking, checking her pulse rate.

“You're Vicky's friend?” she says, barely looking up. “What's your name, love?”

“Jade.”

“We're doing our best for her, Jade,” she says as the ambulance starts.

Long ago, when Vicky and I were at the nursery school, we played what we called the Nee-Naa game, both of us rushing round the room steering thin air with our podgy hands pretending to be ambulances dashing to hospital. Nee-Naa was the sound of the sirens, of course.

Vicky's eyes don't even flicker when the siren starts.

“She can't hear!”

“Maybe she can. Try talking to her. Come up close. Only watch yourself. We don't want you falling over. You're sure you're not hurt yourself? The car didn't hit you too?”

“No, I was still on the pavement. Vicky was still talking to me. It was so
quick
. I … I …”

I'm shaking all over.

“There's a spare blanket there. Put it round you.”

I huddle inside the blanket, pulling the dark gray folds right up over my head. It's as if I'm wrapping my mind up too, smothering it with a blanket, because it's hurting so badly.

The ambulance woman is checking Vicky's breathing again, opening her eyes, shining a torch.

I peer in Vicky's eyes too. The gleam isn't there. I don't think she can see me.

“It's me, Vicky. Jade. Vicky, please be all right. You've got to be OK. Promise me you'll get better. I'll look after you. I'll stay at the hospital. Vicky, I'll do the fun running if you still want, but we don't have to join the Drama Club. I'm probably kidding myself, I'd be useless as an actress. I don't care. The only thing I care about is you. I just want you to be all right, Vicky. You won't die, will you? You can't leave me on my own. I love you, Vic. I love you so much.”

I want the ambulance woman to tell me I'm crazy, that Vicky isn't going to die, she's just a little concussed, she'll recover consciousness any minute and be as right as rain.

She doesn't say anything. She carries on checking Vicky while the ambulance hurtles forward, weaving in and out of the traffic. I'm not facing the way I'm going. I start to feel sick, really sick. My legs buckle.

“Sit down, pet. Take a few deep breaths,” says the ambulance woman, barely glancing at me.

I can't sit down. I have to be there for Vicky. I need to hold her hand.

“It won't hurt her, will it?” I say, clasping Vicky's hand tight.

“No, that's fine. But you really should sit down. We don't want you fainting. I can't cope with two of you at once.”

“I won't faint,” I say fiercely, though the ambulance is spinning as I speak.

Vicky's hand is still warm. I know it as well as my own, her little rounded nails with their silver nail varnish partly nibbled off, and the special silver thumb ring I gave her for Christmas. I wanted it for myself but I didn't have enough cash for two and it turned out it was way too big for me anyway. I'm clutching Vicky's hand so hard I'm deepening all the delicate whorls on her palm. We found this book on palm reading at a rummage sale but I couldn't work out which line was which. Vicky made out she could
read her own palm and said she was going to have a very long life and have two husbands and four children.

“You've got a long life, Vicky. Remember the two husbands and all the children?” I remind her, squeezing her hand. She doesn't squeeze back. She lies there, her face pale, her eyes shut, her mouth slightly open as if she's about to say something—but she stays silent.

I'm the one who talks all the way to the hospital, holding her hand tight, but I have to let go when we arrive outside Casualty. I run along beside her until she's suddenly wheeled right away from me by an urgent medical team.

I'm left, lost.

A nurse talks to me. She's asking me my name but I'm in such a muddle I give her Vicky's name instead, Vicky's address, as if Vicky has taken me over completely. I only realize what I've done when she gives me a cup of tea and says, “Here, drink this, Vicky.”

My teeth clink on the china.

“I'm not Vicky,” I say, and I start to cry. “Please, what's the matter with her? Will she get better? There isn't a mark on her so she has to be all right, doesn't she?”

The nurse puts her arm round me.

“We can't say yet—but I think she might have pretty bad internal injuries. Now we need to get hold of her parents as quickly as possible. Would you know where they work?”

I give her the names of the places. I see a policeman and try to tell him stuff, but I can't think straight anymore. I have another cup of tea. There's a chocolate biscuit too but when the chocolate oozes around my teeth I have to run to the toilet to be sick.

I can't get rid of the taste now. Different nurses come and talk to me but I'm quieter than ever in case they think my breath always smells bad. I don't know what to do. We've got heaps of homework tonight, French and history and math. We always do our math together, Vicky's much better at it than I am. We test each other on French too. I can't do it on my own. I'm mad anyway, fussing about stupid things like bad breath and homework when my best friend is down the corridor, maybe dying….

Of course she's not dying. Vicky is the most alive person I've ever known. She will get completely better and we'll talk about this time with a shudder. I'll give her a big hug and say, “I thought you were really going to die, Vicky,” and she'll laugh and pull a funny death face, eyes bulging, tongue lolling, and spin some yarn about an out-of-body experience. Yes, she'll say she flew up out of her own body and cartwheeled along the ceiling and peered unmasked at all the operations and tickled the handsomest doctor on the top of his head and then she swooped all the way along the corridors and
found me weeping so she linked little fingers with me in our special secret way and then whizzed back into her own body again so we could grow up together and be soul sisters forever….

C
an't I go and sit with Vicky?” I beg. “No, pet, the doctors are busy working on her,” says the nurse.

“I wouldn't get in the way, I swear. I could just hold her hand. I did in the ambulance.”

“Yes, yes, you've been a really great girl. You've done your best for Vicky—but maybe you should go home now.”

“I can't go home!”

“What about your mum? Won't she be worried about you?”

“Mum's at work. And Dad will think I'm round at Vicky's.”

“We should try to get hold of them all the same.”

But she's distracted from the subject of my parents because Vicky's mum and dad suddenly run into Casualty. Mrs. Waters has come straight from her aerobics class. She's still in her shocking
pink leotard with someone else's too-big tracksuit trousers pulled on top for decency. Mr. Waters is still wearing his yellow hard hat from the building site. They gaze round desperately and then see me.

“Jade! Oh God, where's Vicky? We got the message. Is she badly hurt? What
happened
?”

“She got knocked over by a car. I … she stepped out—she just went straight into it,” I gabble. I hear the squeal of brakes and that one high-pitched scream.

The scream won't stop in my head. It's so loud maybe everyone else can hear it too.

“Knocked over?” says Mrs. Waters. “Oh God. Oh God.”

“Now, we mustn't panic. She'll be all right, just you wait and see,” says Mr. Waters. He looks at the nurse with me. “Where is she?”

“Just wait here one second, sir,” she says, and she rushes off.

“We're not waiting! She's our
daughter
!” says Mr. Waters, and he hurries after her.

Vicky's mum is staring at me.

“Did you get knocked down too, Jade?”

I shake my head.

“It was just Vicky. Like I said, she dashed out—”

“Couldn't you have stopped her?”

She doesn't wait for an answer. She runs after Mr. Waters. I stand still. I don't know I'm crying
until the nurse comes back and presses a wad of paper hankies into my palm.