If I Could Fly (7 page)

I found a diary in a bin in the park this week, so now I can keep track of the day and date. Its last owner had torn out some pages before throwing it away. Apart from the ragged remains of the missing paper, it’s in very nice condition. The front cover has some velvety swirls in black and pink and there’s a ribbon to keep your place. The spine even has a pocket with a slim pen tucked inside.

I’m folding down the page corners each time I see the Face – there are four so far. It’s there every evening, as the light fades. I can’t see its expressions, but from its stillness I’m guessing it belongs to someone who is sad, or bored, or just plain nosy. It’s a big head on a small body, which is another clue. So maybe it’s a kid, a dwarf, or a life-size doll some joker is trying to scare me with.

I’m not frightened of it, though. In a strange way, I like it. It makes me feel less alone.

Whoever it is doesn’t seem to want to get us evicted, but Dair and I have stopped using the front door just in case. Dair has smashed out some panes on the ground floor at the side of the building furthest from the street so we can climb in and out without being seen. He told me to stay inside my house and away from the windows too. The curfew on the streets has been extended and begins at eight o’clock at night now, so there are more patrols driving around the neighbourhood and he says I must be extra careful.

I’ve put blinds up so that there’s no way I can be spotted from outside. One is actually made out of a woven cotton mat, wrapped round a piece of wood which is balanced between paperback copies of
Pride and Prejudice
and
Vampire Vacation
. I found them with about twenty other stories in a box in the hospital library at the end of this corridor. It was the only thing left in the room, apart from two wax crayons and a
beanbag with a big split in it. I mended the tear so now I have a chair of my own.

Most days, I curl into it like a banana, my feet sticking up at one end, and read to myself out loud, doing different voices for all the characters. I like feeling that there are lots of people around me.

‘Can you tell the BBC to shut up, mate!’ Dair often yells from next door. ‘If I’d wanted a costume drama, I would have got a television.’

I don’t think he minds, really. Sometimes, I know he comes and sits outside my house, just so he can listen. I try extra hard to read well then. I hear him laugh, or sigh, or tut tut, or draw his breath in, if it’s an exciting bit. Once, he even corrected my pronunciation. Tee-totaller seemed the oddest spelling I’d ever seen.

‘I think you’ll find it’s “teetotaller”,’ a squeaky voice whispered through my window. ‘It means someone who doesne drink a dram. Although I’ve never met such a person.’

I think Dair loves stories as much as I do. Maybe,
one day, he’ll read me one of his favourites or, better still, make one up. It would be more fun than reading the horrible stories on the front pages of the papers about the rising violence on the streets since the food shops have stopped opening every day.

I don’t want to think about that. I just focus on building my house, making it stronger and cosier. It even has a roof now, made from plastic sheeting, newspaper and pages from magazines, placed over a string frame. When I go to sleep, I’m staring up at wild horses galloping over the prairie, a double page spread from
National Geographic
. It’s usually too dark to see them, unless there’s moonlight. But in the morning they are always there to greet me – Flash and Racer, Sundancer and Wings.

I haven’t tried to find the hospital. Every time I think about going, I feel too frightened by the things Dair said. Even going out foraging makes me very nervous. I do it at night, but before the curfew. The pain in my leg means I’m limping and can’t run fast,
so getting caught is becoming more likely. Each time I jump into a skip to rummage for treasure, I wonder if a big net will be thrown over the top, trapping me, as the container is craned on to a low-loader and taken to the dump.

A homeless man was killed last week when the wheelie bin he was sleeping in was emptied into the crusher.

‘Nowhere is safe now,’ said Dair.

Nowhere except my house of books – and that’s where I want to stay, with my little china Buddha and my dancing flower, my chandelier without a bulb and my framed photo of guinea pigs playing tug of war, until I can find the missing jigsaw pieces in my brain and put them back, one by one.

Dair and I haven’t spoken much since our argument. He’s keeping himself to himself. He hasn’t sat in his chair for days and, apart from ear wigging at story time, he just stays in his space next door, making plans to storm the Hive and ‘set the people free’. Sometimes, he
visits the library I’ve set up. He can borrow three books at a time for as long as he likes. But they must be ones from the shelf and not from my walls.

Andy the bear has a new job. He’s my doorbell now, thanks to some new batteries I found in a paper bag at a bus stop. If I hear, ‘I love you,’ or, ‘I just
lerve
honey,’ I know I have a visitor. No surprises who it is.

I would give anything for it to be Little Bird. I want to speak to her so much, to hear her voice, to ask her a big ‘Why?’ Maybe I could call her? I’ll need money to do that – some change or maybe a pound coin. I could find that tomorrow, if I look hard. But if I call her, the FISTS can find me – Dair says the pay machines are bugged.

I could write to her – but Dad thought our post was being opened before it got to us. If the FISTS are reading the mail, they would identify the postmark and the security teams would start scouring the area, inch by inch.

I’ve got to think this through, so I’m heading down
the stairs to the café, or what’s left of it, where the smashed window pane has created our new entry and exit point. I used to sit in here with Mum during visiting time and there are still a few tables and chairs that escaped the clearance, and a sign saying
Have you washed your hands? Don’t spread infection!
I haven’t washed them, but I guess it doesn’t matter now. The counter which used to have plates full of scones, cakes and biscuits is empty. There is no fat, smiley woman wearing a yellow apron by the till, and there are no kids with bandages or shaved heads or in wheelchairs waiting to be served.

I duck and climb through the gap in the window on to the flower bed next to the building. I walk down the path, rose thorns pricking at my arms and catching my sleeve on the way through.

The air is crisp and cool in the garden. It’s the middle of the afternoon and already the light is beginning to fade. I sit on the bench and look at the low, grey clouds, with patches of blue in between. Little Bird and I used to play games with the sky. If you stare
up, after a while, your eyes adjust, and you can see patterns and shapes. There’s an old man with a walking stick, a sheep with six legs, a palm tree –
waay!
– even a monkey!

And there’s a woman, or a girl, with her face in her hands. Is she crying or screaming? The shape shifts and the clouds move on before I can decide.

I bring my knees up under my chin and wrap my arms round them. The vision was very unsettling and for some reason my heart is thumping and I’m afraid, almost too afraid to move. From not far away, maybe a mile or two, a familiar fairy song is floating towards me like the gulls on the breeze –
la la, la-la la
. I think of Mr Carter, the ice-cream man, and smile. I don’t suppose he is selling many of those cones in this weather.

Moments later, a harsher noise – sirens, moving at speed – jars the peace. There’s a single shot, like the explosion of a firework. Then silence.

My body is trembling. Images of Crease and Slee, lying face down on the pavement, hand-cuffed, flash
through my mind. I shake my head hard.

Don’t do this, brain. That’s not what I saw
. But who knows what is happening on the other side of these walls?

Suddenly, there is a snap of a branch and I’m on my feet and my eyes are scanning this way, that way, and I’m ready to take off, because no one, no FIST, no Face, no teetotaller is going to take me to that centre where the sun doesn’t shine.

‘Grab the BLAGGER!’ yells a deep voice and Dair comes crashing through the undergrowth, plastic mac flapping wide, arms forward like a sleepwalker, eyeballs almost popping out of his head, hair stiff with caked mud, one foot totally bare and bleeding.

‘Aaargh!’ I’m yelling, because he’s yelling, but I don’t know what I’m yelling about. And then I see it – a brown and white rabbit with a pink nose and floppy ears, hopping nimbly but with terrified eyes, backwards, forwards, sideways, in any direction to get away from Dair. It is holding up its front right paw and
I can see the flesh near the foot is red and raw.

‘Dinner!’ Dair shrieks as he rushes past me, and a backdraught of fruits of the forest follows. ‘It’s meat, mate, free-range, full-blooded, bona fide MEAT!’

‘I thought you said you wouldn’t eat meat because of the virus,’ I call after him.

‘Aye, well this bunny looks pretty healthy to me.’ He crouches low in an attempt to corner the creature between the wall and the bench. ‘In fact, it looks delicious and ma juices are rrrrrunning at the thought of sinking ma teeth into its . . .’

‘It’s injured and you’re not killing it,’ I say firmly, picking up the furry ball and cradling it in my arms.

‘Finders keepers,’ says Dair, getting closer.

‘Losers weepers,’ I counter, fixing him with my sternest stare. ‘Bunny might have the virus – then what?’

‘I die full up,’ replies Dair with a shrug. His shoulders are heaving up and down. His neck is low, his cheeks sunken. He looks beaten, like a hyena that has lost its prey.

‘It needs a sanctuary, just like us.’ I stroke the animal’s ears, holding it close.

‘It’s not living here, if that’s what you’re conniving,’ states Dair, still getting his breath back. ‘I’m asthmatic so there’s to be no fur, no fur –’ he wheezes – ‘no further than the front door.’

‘I can have a pet if I like. He can live in my house and he won’t bother you.’ I make my way back towards the café window. ‘At least he’ll be company, which is more than you are.’

I’ve realised two things in the last five minutes: that standing up for myself isn’t so bad (if I don’t do it, who will?) and that it’s only the second time in my life I’ve been this honest with anyone, spontaneously, from the heart.

I glance back at Dair. He has his hands on his hips and looks like a pantomime pirate, his mouth open in a big ‘O’, his eyes wide and hurt.

‘I hope it bites you, you evil-tongued harpy,’ he retorts. ‘Don’t come running to me for sympathy when
your peepers stick together and your body writhes and shakes in agony on account of the poison from its putrid fangs.’

‘I won’t,’ I reply.

Dair is lifting his arms up to the skies in a gesture of frustration and stamping his feet on the grass, like a spoiled kid. Then he stands still and says quietly, ‘I wasn’t really going to eat it. I couldn’t. It’s just that sometimes I . . .’

I’m not taking any notice. I’m already thinking about a name. I’m going to call this rabbit Furball.

‘You’re going to like it here,’ I’m telling Furball, who turns out to be a she, not a he. I’m stroking her soft stomach as she lies upside down in my arms. I’m hoping the cotton patch soaked in aloe vera and tied with ribbon round her bad foot will help it heal. Just holding her makes me happy. I don’t remember the last time I felt like this.

‘I wonder where you lived before,’ I say to her. ‘You don’t look like a wild rabbit. You must have had an owner. Did something happen to you? Did you have to run away?’ Her eyes watch me, unblinking and unreadable.

‘You’re safe now,’ I whisper, hesitating to make it a promise, for those should never be trusted. The possibility that similar experiences have caused our
lives to collide makes me shiver. Perhaps this derelict hospital is really an ark, and more and more strays will come to take refuge from the hostile world outside. Maybe the old wards will fill up and the corridors will be full of children playing skittles and racing toy cars.

Maybe Dair, Furball and I are just the beginning?

‘I’ve got a family too,’ I explain. ‘A mum and a dad. And a gran. But I had to run away from them too. Something bad happened – my brain won’t tell me what it was – and I’ve come a long way and now I’m here. If you had looked at the kids in my class, you would never have picked me out as the one who would be living rough, hiding from the FISTS. I was always the mouse, squeaking quietly. I wonder what they’re saying about me, the rest of 9B. Most of them won’t believe I’ve gone. They think my life’s sorted. Parents, house, happy family, no worries. But it takes more than a hutch and some hay to make a happy bunny, eh, Furball?

The rabbit is scratching her ear, sharp claws moving
so quickly I can barely see them. She is wriggling now, agitated. I put her down on my carpet and she hops to the front door. After sniffing the air around her, she scrabbles at the floor, as if digging a burrow, twitches her tail and promptly hops back inside again.