If I Could Fly (15 page)

I don’t want to be silent now. The silence connects all the puzzles out there, allows them to happen.

All I know for certain is that for the last few weeks I’ve had new eyes, which don’t like what they see. And a friendship which feels like home.

‘Sooty, we’ll miss the surprise,’ says Alfie, snapping his fingers about two millimetres away from my face.

‘Sorry.’ I blink. We are holding each other’s gaze deeply. I realise I’m spending more and more time each day thinking about Alfie. When he’s this close, I go all tingly and my throat tightens up. He’s swallowing hard and sniffing, so maybe we’re allergic to each other. But if that were true I don’t think it would feel this nice.

Suddenly, my house fills with bright light. There is a loud, crackling bang overhead and the harsh
rat-a-tat
of explosions like gunfire.

‘Fireworks,’ Alfie says, breaking the silence between us.

‘Yes.’ My head is nodding slowly. My breathing has become shallow and fast.

‘We’re missing them,’ he persists, eye contact still fixed.

‘Are they the surprise?’ I forgot it’s the Festival of Lights. My voice has gone weirdly husky.

Alfie shakes his head and launches into action. ‘Put on every layer you’ve got,’ he instructs. ‘And an extra one for luck.’

Within minutes, we are scootering down the hill side by side, scarves trailing like the tails of comets. Above and all around, the night sky is exploding. The
BOOM
of gunpowder is followed by cascades of colour; fountains, spheres and domes, filling the horizon.

We hurtle past the leaning houses, the locked sweet shop, the launderette which still has its lights on and customers waiting for their washing. I catch a glimpse of Maisie, her hands on her hips, probably telling them about the latest thing that has ‘got her goat’.

The coast road is closed for the aerial display and
is packed with crowds. There are little kids perched high on adult shoulders and rows of old people sat like sardines on benches or in electric buggies. The fireworks are lighting up their faces, hundreds of them, and all mouths seem to be open.

‘Oooh!’ they are exclaiming. ‘Aaah,’ they are sighing, according to the size of each explosion.

Safety in numbers, I’m thinking. No one is giving us a second glance. I’m looking at them, though, each and every one of them, in case under a woolly hat or a hood or a pair of ear muffs I recognise the long, flowing, perfumed locks and drawn features of Dair.

The more I analyse it, the more I believe I might be the cause of his disappearance. Did he think I had abandoned him, when I had really gone to find help? Did he set fire to the building in anger or desperation? Alfie says it was just to do with his madness. Did it happen because I’d let Dair down? Perhaps I brought the bad luck with me to the hospital. Maybe, like Gran says, it’s a bad penny you can carry in your pocket.

KaBOOM
go the rockets, over our heads, raining sparks like confetti. Alfie is enjoying this. His eyes are bright with wonder and excitement. He looks like a kid who has never seen the dark side of life. I feel guilty suddenly. By being friends with me, he is risking so much. He’s lying to his mum, for starters. He’s staying up really late most nights and going home to his bed in the early hours. His schoolwork must be suffering, although he never says. He’s even smuggled out some of his mum’s old clothes.

He’s done all this for me. He looks out for me, but he isn’t pushy. I feel I can tell him anything and he won’t be angry, or make fun of me, or say vicious things. He gets impatient if I talk about Dair, but that’s probably because he’s being protective. Dair is trouble, in his opinion. Maybe I am trouble for Alfie. I can’t bear the thought of anything happening to him because of me and my bad penny.

‘How’s your leg?’ Alfie asks, out of the blue.

‘Good,’ I answer. ‘Sore in the mornings and last
thing, like someone’s sticking a needle in. But it goes away. Why?’

‘Wondered if you’d like a better view?’ He nods towards a circle of light in the distance. ‘It’ll be quite a push, though,’ he adds.

‘What is it?’

‘A big wheel,’ Alfie answers. ‘The fair always comes for the festival night.’

‘I’ve never been to a fair, or ridden on a big wheel,’ I admit. I’ve never even seen the one that comes to our zone once a year. My dad says it’s the place where lowlives wait to prey on girls like me and he doesn’t want me wasting exit tokens on going somewhere so dangerous.

Little Bird told me not to say that Crease and Slee go there and win stuffed toys and coconuts on the shooting gallery.

From here, the fair doesn’t look dangerous. The wheel is beautiful, an arc of blue, green and pink lights.

‘So, do you feel up to it?’ asks Alfie, concerned.

‘Yabradoodle,’ I reply, with a smile. I’m going to try to be cheerful, for Alfie’s sake.

The ride along the coast road to the fairground takes us about ten minutes. We dodge around groups of kids waving light-sticks and luminous neck haloes. We give a wide berth to the teenagers throwing Chinese fire-crackers on the ground.

Alfie weaves between the tall legs of a stilt walker – he can be such an idiot – and nearly gets us both run over by six unicycles, travelling in pairs, following just behind. They don’t bother to slow down for us so we have to zigzag out of their way.

I’ve got hiccups from laughing so hard. I’m glad we came out. I didn’t realise firework night was so much fun. It’s taking my mind off my aching thigh.

The music from the fair gets louder as we approach. The beats from all the different rides are competing with each other. There are screams of fear coming from the roller coaster and the hammer, which swings a full three hundred and sixty degrees. There are bleeps and
sirens blasting from the bumper cars and a thousand other noises, human and electronic, combining to create the loudest discord I’ve ever heard.

Lasers are criss-crossing in the sky like chopsticks. Round, coloured lights outside the stalls flash in sequence.

‘Roll up, roll up!’ shout the men and women with money belts strapped to their waists, eager for the visitors to part with their cash. ‘Win a prize, sir, win a prize, madam. Three goes for a fiver, you can’t say fairer than that.’

This is a world away from curfew and the killing squads. It’s like another country, one which isn’t in the grip of a deadly disease. The rules about staying in are relaxed tonight and people have spilled from their houses like lab rats uncaged. Young women in short skirts and high heels are letting gravity hurl them round and round and upside down. Kids are stuffing their faces with candyfloss and dancing in front of mirrors that distort your shape. Mums and dads are parting
with twenty pound notes as if someone has told them it’s the end of the world.

Scan, Caly. Plan your escape route, just in case.

Outside the ring of neon lights, there is just darkness. The firework display has ended and now the air is heavy with smoke and the acrid smell of explosives. I’m thinking that when the festivities end there won’t be much time to reach the hospital before the curfew.

‘Isn’t it great?’ Alfie asks as we leave the scooters by the trunk of a large tree and make our way into the sea of bodies. He motions for me to follow him and we push against the tide of movement towards the eye in the sky. Now we are up close, it looks colossal. Its passengers are so far away when they are swept to the top of the arc that their faces are indistinct and their screeches like the distant howl of wolves.

There’s a queue for the ride. Alfie counts heads, waits for six more people to join it, and then he and I tag on the end. It is only then I see the sign ahead
which says that the cost is three pounds. My excitement drops into my belly like a stone. There’s no way we can pay. Alfie has read it too but isn’t reacting.

‘We haven’t got six quid, dur,’ I say, making a point.

‘We won’t need it.’

‘You think we can get on without being noticed? What about that bald gorilla with huge muscles who’s in charge of taking the money?’

Alfie nods and taps his nose. The big wheel has finished its rotations and passengers are being unloaded carriage by carriage and their places filled by the people in our queue. The couple in front of us are the last ones to be invited on to the platform and then gorilla man puts the chain across the entrance again. Alfie motions for me to slip under it before anyone notices, and we sneak along the wooden walkway, right to the end. There’s an empty carriage between two full ones about half a metre from the ground and we have a split second to clamber on board, lifting the metal bar so that it wedges us into place.

‘They leave one in every ten carriages free,’ explains Alfie, puffing. ‘So the weight is balanced.’ He sees the look of concern on my face. ‘Don’t worry. We don’t weigh much. At least, I don’t,’ he adds, and I use his chubby arm as a mock punch bag. Already, we’ve lifted several metres into the air as the carriages behind are filled.

The higher we ascend, the more the noise on the ground fades. At the top of the arc, there is only the winter wind, blowing whispers of classical music into the stratosphere. It’s the ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’. I recognise it from my gran’s CD collection. It’s one of the tunes she always used to hum when she was washing up.

‘There, the torchlight procession. We’ve got the best seats in the house,’ says Alfie, pleased with himself.

Far below, about twenty Festival of Light societies in different costumes, from native tribes to Elizabethan courtiers, are marching behind brass bands and lines of drummers. They carry flaming torches and some are
dancing as they progress along the coast road.

Alfie joins in, which causes the carriage to rock violently and my eyes to grow as wide as saucers.

‘They used to burn papier-mâché models at the end of the march,’ he explains, taking no notice of my terror. ‘Giant models of politicians, celebrities, religious dudes in dresses.’

Not Bud the Pud, I’m hoping.

Alfie continues. ‘Mum says it’s against the law now, for health and safety reasons. But she thinks the government just wanted it stopped because so many of the models looked like the prime minister or the European president.’

‘Alfie?’

‘What?’

‘Can you stop jiggling? It’s a really LONG WAY DOWN,’ I plead.

‘OK. Sorry. Hold on tight.’

As he says this, the wheel starts to rotate at full speed. My stomach lurches each time we skim the
ground and swoop back into the air. The rush of oxygen in my lungs and my brain feels electrifying. I’m gripping Alfie’s arm for all I’m worth and I’m laughing because the wind has whipped his crazy hair into a ball of frizz.

‘Alfie, I don’t want this to end. I always want to feel this free!’

Alfie pauses for a second, then looks at me intently. ‘Then there’s something I need to tell you,’ he replies. ‘And it won’t wait another day.’

‘Let’s just escape over the ocean and find our very own island to live on,’ I suggest.

‘It’ll have to be somewhere with a fun fair, where all the rides are free,’ he answers.

We are sitting in a large, wooden fishing boat called the
Aurora,
on the shingle in front of a row of beach huts and messy tackle sheds. The boat is roped to a winch, which lowers it into the water at high tide and drags it back up the beach with its haul from the sea each morning, before the town has even stirred.

We are huddled out of the wind by the
Aurora
’s engine, wrapped in black bin liners we found at the fairground. It’s after midnight. The parades and festivities have finished. The revellers have gone home. There is no noise, except for the whistle of the
wind between the huts and the sea smashing against the shore.

‘Warm enough?’ asks Alfie, pulling the plastic up over my exposed hand.

‘Baking.’ I smile, trying to stop my teeth chattering like a wind-up skull. I’ve never spent the night on the beach before and Alfie’s plan for us to hang out and watch the sunrise is totally ace.

‘You’re a brilliant mate,’ I tell him. ‘No one’s ever taken me anywhere special before.’

‘You won’t think that when you get hypothermia.’ He’s rubbing his nose, which probably means he’s embarrassed.

‘What happens when your mum comes home, though?’ I ask.

‘She’s doing a longer shift tonight,’ says Alfie. ‘She likes us to have a few treats at Christmas.’

‘She sounds really nice. Maybe I could meet her soon.’

‘Yeah. Maybe,’ replies Alfie. He’s staring at the sea.

‘I could see which footballers you’ve got on your wall,’ I tease.

Alfie pulls a face. ‘Do I look like a footie fan?’

I shrug. I realise I don’t know much about him, despite all the time we’ve spent together. I don’t like to think he is hiding stuff from me. Maybe I just haven’t asked enough questions. ‘OK. Another guess. Shelves of little painted soldiers?’

‘Nope,’ says Alfie, clearly enjoying this.

‘Posters of wildlife, pop stars, cars, robots?’ I’m grasping at straws now.

‘Not even close. I like maps. Weird, I know. My dad was a geography teacher, so it must be in my genes.’