Number 8 (14 page)

That was the hardest thing I ever had to do, leaving that school. But Miss Braithwaite told me that wherever I went, I could take those numbers with me. No one could take that away from me, she said. Just like the Africans and their music. And she was right.

What they
can
take away from you is your calm. Just like that. And then everything loses its shape. One comment from Badman and I'm a beanbag.

At lunch Asim sits down on the bench and silently passes me a bag of chips. He doesn't need to say anything. We munch away for a while and watch the pigeons pecking at our chip crumbs. There's this one kind of bird with a tall plume growing up from its head like an exclamation mark. As it bobs about it looks so enthusiastic. I'm really fond of that bird.

“This afternoon if you want to come over, we can finish putting the possum house together,” Asim says after a while. “My father thought we did a good job with the sawing.”

I smile and start on my apple. I remember the feel of the saw cutting into the wood. It was hard at first, working
against the resistance of the pine, and then the blade cut through, sliding deeper and deeper, into the groove. I liked standing up all those pieces of wood we'd cut, one against the other, so they made a perfect straight line. I liked, too, working at the bench, surrounded by all the busy jars of nails and screws and the tools hanging neatly on their hooks, polished and ready to use. Thinking of this, my heart lifts a little.

“Dad has left us the brackets so we can put the sides together.”

“They're those metal things you fix to the wood to make the corners?”

“Yes. They look like they'll be the right size. We'll need to trim the roof planks—”

“Ooh, you wanna be careful you don't
hurt
yourself with those dangerous
tools.
” There's a loud guffaw behind us and we whip around to see Badman and Joe, breathing down our necks. How long have they been standing there?

Badman comes around and slumps down on the bench next to Asim. Joe slouches near me. We're sandwiched between them now like sardines. What do they want? I feel a cough coming on.

“You making a little home for the possie-wossies?” says Badman. He leans out over Asim. “Isn't that cute, Joe? And Daddy's lending them his little tools!”

Joe snorts, nodding like those toy dogs you see in the back windows of cars.

Anger is heating up my cheeks. I can feel my face starting to throb. “Haven't you got anything better to do than spy on us? What a pathetic life you must have.”

Asim nudges me in the ribs. “Be quiet,” he whispers. His breath is hot in my ear.

Badman stares at me. I watch his leg starting to twitch. Getting faster. I think of Mr. Kemp and his lit fuse. Something's building up in Badman.

Suddenly he leans over and grabs Asim's lunch box.

“No!” cries Asim before he can stop himself.

Badman laughs. He flicks up the lid. “What's this stuff?” He holds the box near his face and sniffs. “Phew, it stinks!” He doubles over, pretending to vomit.

“Yuck, I can smell it from here,” says Joe, holding his nose.

“If it makes you spew, why don't you give it back,” I snap.

But Badman is rooting around in the lunch box. “Oh, and look, there's a note!” he crows, waving the piece of paper in Asim's face. “It's all in foreign scribble but wait,” he peers closer, “there's something at the end,
love from Dad
and how cute, there's a heart—”

Asim lunges at Badman, grabbing at his arm. “Give it back, you stupid!”

Badman gives a shout of laughter, holding the note higher. “
You stupid,
” he mimics in a high voice.

Asim's eyes are filling. Hold it back, I'm willing him, just hold on.

Scrunching the note up in his fist, Badman shouts, “Ooh
Daddy,
where's your
daddy
to protect you? Why don't you go back to where you came from? No one wants you here, you stupid refugee.”

Asim makes a terrible choking noise. Tears are spurting down his face. He's not even trying to wipe them away.

“Oh, look at him, the wuss. Cry about it!” “Shut your mouth,” I say. I say it quietly, almost in a whisper.

“What?”

“I said shut your mouth or I'll shut it for you.”

“Oh, yeah, how will you do that, you wimp?”

Badman is leaning out over Asim. He shoves his face near mine and I can smell his stinking breath.

“What is it with you?” Anger is starting to cramp in my guts. “I bet you never got a note in your lunch box. Is that it? Who'd ever write
you
one, huh?” I'm trembling with rage. My head is going black, just this sea of hot burning darkness. “You're a pathetic bastard, Badman. You spit on everything good. That's why everyone hates you.”

Badman lets out a roar, so deep, so loud, it's as if it's been growing in him since he was born. It cracks the air like one of his explosions, like the engine on a Mustang, full throttle. He springs up and comes at me, throwing his body right at my chest so that we thud to the ground. Pain bites into my spine. He's on top of me, and I can't breathe. All the air has been punched out of me. His hands are on my throat, his thumb pressing hard into my windpipe. He's swearing, purple in the face, but I can't make out what he's saying because there's such a red roaring in my head. I'm dying here on the ground with the stones and pigeon poop digging into my back and a panic grips me so hard that I shoot out my fist and smash it hard against his hateful jaw.

Badman sways above me. I feel something hot and slippery on my fingers. His cheek is bleeding. He's losing his hold and I heave myself sideways, trying to slide out. My shoulders are off the ground and I lift my head just as I see his white knuckles coming toward me. It happens in slow motion, like the car accident I was in once where there were only fractions of a second before the impact but it seemed
to take forever. I unfreeze enough to turn my head before his fist slams into my ear.

The world explodes.

A rushing sound in my eardrum flows into the sea behind my eyes. It mixes with Joe's voice, urgent, scared. His arm is around Asim's neck in a headlock, and he's yelling something at Badman, warning him. I close my eyes and when I open them there's Mitch and Esmerelda grabbing Badman's shoulders and old Norton hurtling up the path behind him.

Asim and I catch the three-thirty bus home. We sit quietly on the bus, looking out the windows.

“Badman got detention,” says Asim. “He saw the principal while you were in the nurse's office. His jaw is pretty bruised. You know he said you hit him first.”

I shrug. “I did. We told them what happened.”

“There's a note going home to his mother.”

“I bet he's really broken up about that.”

The rushing sound in my ear is still there, but fainter now. It's more like a distant surf breaking, right out the back.

I crack my knuckles four times. “Bastard,” I mutter.

Asim nods.

“Moron,” I go on, feeling the anger rise again, “dirty stinky-breath maggot.”

Asim nods again.

“I'd like to stick a firecracker up
his
butt and light it.”

Asim grins.

“I'd like to squash him like a fly and flick him into a spewing volcano—”

Asim holds up his hands. “You mustn't say these things. It solves nothing.”

“But it makes you feel better, doesn't it?”

Asim smiles briefly. “For a minute, yes. I just hope Badman never rules this country.”

We stare gloomily at the seat in front of us.

At Asim's house there's a new bag of chocolate chip cookies on the table and a bowl of green grapes in the fridge. We munch steadily and after a little while Asim says, “Come on, let's go out to the shed.”

As we walk into the smell of clean wood and fresh paint, I take a deep breath. Asim goes over to the workbench and picks up the metal brackets, showing me how they work. We take two of the wooden walls of the house and angle them to form a corner. We measure them again from random spots, to make sure they're all even. Exactly twelve inches high. We take turns to hold the wood in place and hammer, and Asim starts to whistle. It must be a Kurdish tune, I'm thinking, strange and haunting, making you think of wild places you've never been to. His whistling winds like a thread around the shed, coloring everything.

We finish one corner, and stand back to examine it. The join is smooth, perfect! We give each other a high five. Now we get started on the next. As we work I'm thinking how good this feels, to make a real object with my own hands. It makes me wonder if this is what I'd like to do for a career—work with wood and build something beautiful that is also really useful. I can't wait to see if the possums like it enough to make it their home.

For the last couple of weeks I've been leaving pieces of apple and banana out on the porch. Sometimes, late at night, I see a flash of fur dash across the table. Once I beamed the flashlight right into a pair of black eyes. The
possum had a bit of apple in its paws, and it just went on nibbling in the spotlight. As soon as I inched forward, it fled. Maybe one day they won't mind me sitting with them while they eat. In the morning, the fruit is all gone. It's such a good feeling, looking at that empty tin plate. When their house is built, we'll leave the food in there. Then they'll have full tummies and they can just sleep where they eat, like a real home.

“I'm sorry you got hurt today because of me,” Asim says suddenly.

I take a moment to answer. I was far away. I sigh, because I don't really want to come back. “He didn't hit me because of you,” I say. “I make him angry all by myself.”

“Yes, but you didn't have to do anything when he called me a stupid refugee—”

“Listen, you should have seen him all through math. He couldn't wait to thump me. I think there's a lot of people he wants to thump. His rage seems sort of spread out, and if you're in the general direction, you take it.” I sigh again. “I'm so sick of trying to get out of the way.”

“Yes.”

“And Esmerelda,” I go on, “why does she even talk to him?” I feel angry again just thinking about it. “Just before lunch, on the way out of class, did you see her jabbering with him? And they were laughing together. When she talked, you could see him really listening. He was being
nice.
Well, nice for
him.
It made me want to puke.”

Asim is quiet for a moment. Then he says, “They talk about music, I think.”

“Yeah, whatever, but why would you want to talk about
any
thing with that maggot? I mean, say I met a person who shared the same interests as me, you know, maybe this
person was an even-number freak or something, or they'd discovered that the answer to life was the number eight—well even so, I wouldn't spend time chatting and
laughing
with him if I found out he was a murderer, you know, or a racist or a phone stalker…”

“But it was Ez who ran to get Norton and Ez who pulled him off you. She went white, you know. I saw her. She was really worried.” Asim puts down the hammer. “I wish it had been me who had stopped him.”

“No, but Joe—he had you in that headlock, you couldn't—”

Asim shakes his head. “Not at first. We both were just standing there, staring. My legs wouldn't move. It was as if they were stuck to the ground.”

“It's okay, don't—”

“No, I felt very bad and then I tried to run, to get help and that was when Joe grabbed me. But I was useless, like being stuck in a dream—”

“It's okay, Asim.” I pick up the hammer. I want to go back to that soothing place I was in, with the wood and the possums. “Look, we just need another couple of nails in here and we'll have made another perfect corner!”

“While you were at the nurse, quite a few kids came up to see how you were. Lilly was one of them. She said you were very brave. ‘I like that in a man,' she said.”

I snort and we grin at each other.

“And what
about
Lilly,” I say. “Do you think Badman likes her?”

Asim shrugs.

“Do
you?
Do you think she's hot, like everyone does?” He shrugs again. “I suppose so.”

“I don't, really. It was strange that day at the beach—for a
minute she looked at me like I was special. But it's the same look she gives Mitch, you know, and then she just suddenly switches it off. Makes you feel you're not as good as her somehow, like you haven't found the right thing to keep her interest. Like you're some lowly evolved insect in the food chain.”

Now Asim snorts. “Insects have amazing survival mechanisms.”

“I know. Take the cockroach. Did you know it's the only living creature that could survive a nuclear blast?”

“That's right. Because it has no central nervous system.”

“No kidding!” I stop and think about that for a while. “Anyway, the thing is, I think Lilly is an outside kind of person—you know, everything about her is on the outside, whereas Esmerelda is fuller, busier inside, and you're always wanting to know what she's thinking. To know the inside of her.”

When it's my turn to hammer, I really whack in the nail. “But no matter what, I'm finished with Esmerelda if she's friends with Badman after this. Finished.”

Asim grins. “Sure,” he says, and we stand back to look at the house.

It's starting to get dark as we're trimming the roof planks. Through the windows I can see the streetlights coming on. I'm thinking I should get home and that Mom may be worried, when sure enough we hear the phone ringing from the house. Asim runs across the grass to get it.

“It was your mom,” he pants as he comes back in. “She says we've got ten minutes. She invited me for dinner.”