January 2003

When it started snowing again, Natalie finally admitted to herself that the bus wasn’t going to come.  She decided to walk.

She should have been a lot more annoyed.  It was freezing.  She’d been waiting at that bus stop for twenty minutes.  She was going to have to walk for another twenty minutes, and then she was still going to be late for school.  But as she looked around, all she could feel was a kind of awe.

It had been seven or eight years since it had snowed around here.  Natalie had forgotten how much it changed things.

Most days, this road made your heart sink just to look at it.  Dull brown pavements covered in chewing gum and dog crap, surrounded by ugly houses and grey, withered trees, full of people who yelled in your ear or elbowed you out of the way.  Today, Natalie had most of it to herself.  Every so often she saw a trail of footprints, either tread marks from somebody’s shoes or a little impression of a cat or dog’s paw, but mostly there was just one quiet drift of white, with little flakes blowing up around her feet like miniature blizzards.

The air tasted cleaner today.  Natalie didn’t know why, but it did.

A few streets away from school, Natalie saw some people up ahead, crouching down in the pavement.  As she approached, one of them stood up, and Natalie recognised her- Abbie Chamberlain, a girl from her RE class.  Abbie caught her eye and grinned.  “I walked up to meet Amelia, and it turned out she was doing this,” she explained.

“What is it?” asked Natalie.

“Er…  I think David said it was going to be an alligator?”  Abbie looked back at the other two for confirmation.

“It’s an optical illusion,” said one of them.  She was in their year at school, but Natalie wouldn’t have remembered that her name was Amelia if Abbie hadn’t said.  “It’s going to drive people crazy.”

Abbie nodded.  “So that’s our good deed for the day.”

Natalie laughed.  Part of her- the anal retentive part- wanted to remind them that they were already late for school and should hurry up, but the rest of her overruled it.  She had a feeling that, if she said something as stupid as that, an opportunity for something beautiful and worthwhile would disappear forever.  “Why an alligator, though?”

Amelia tossed her hair like a girl in a book.  “We like to ask, ‘why not?’”

A third person, who’d been gathering snow a little way off, wandered over and gave Natalie a wave.  She couldn’t see much of him- besides his face, most of him was wrapped in layers and layers of wool- but she saw a pair of bright blue eyes and a reassuring smile.  She smiled back.

Amelia straightened up and made a show of brushing the snow off her gloves.  “Time to go, Abbie,” she announced, “It was fun while it lasted, but they’ll be expecting us over at the old schoolhouse soon.”

Natalie held up her hands.  “Oh, don’t stop just because…”

“No, no, it’s time we were heading in.  David can put on the finishing touches.”  Amelia nodded towards the boy in all the woollens.  He was crouching down over the alligator, but Natalie could still tell how tall he was from here.  He looked a couple of years older than the rest of them.

“Mind if we walk with you?” asked Abbie, picking up her bag.

“Sure,” said Natalie.  Her heart had done a weird somersault when Abbie had asked that, but she didn’t think it showed in her voice.

“Excellent,” said Amelia.  She stepped out ahead of Natalie and Abbie, leading them on.  “Come along.  We’re on a polar expedition here.”

*

Natalie, Abbie and Amelia were half an hour late.  Most of the other Year Elevens were even later than that.  There was a group coming in on a bus that had got stuck on the motorway, and they weren’t expected to be here for another hour.  The teachers didn’t see the point of setting any important work while half of their students weren’t even there to do it, so most of the lessons were whiled away with stories of everyone’s morning, as they all tried to work out who’d had the hardest journey.  The classrooms were emptier, the hours were freer, and every time you looked out of the window, you saw a new world.  Natalie couldn’t remember any other school day like this.

“It’s sheer anarchy,” said Amelia’s friend Johnny.  The four of them had ended up sat together near the front of their Science classroom.  Their usual seats were a lot further apart, but today Mrs Sugarman had told them she didn’t want everyone sitting on opposite sides of the room, and they’d been happy to oblige.  “One thing goes wrong, and every single system of power breaks down.”

“Yes,” said Abbie happily, “and then we get to make snow alligators.”

Johnny laughed.  “Actually, have you seen all those snowmen the Year Sevens made around the entrance?  It’s practically an army.  Like something out of Calvin and Hobbes.”

“Homicidal killer snow goons,” said Natalie, sitting back in her chair, “I think that’s it, anyway.”  She had a warm, contented feeling in her stomach, as if she was a cat curling up by the fireplace.  She didn’t know why she’d never hung out with these three before.  They’d been talking all morning, and there hadn’t been an awkward silence once.  In Natalie’s experience, that was pretty rare once you got to secondary school.

Johnny grinned back at her.  “Snow goons are bad news,” he quoted.

“I can’t believe Miss Rivers broke up that snowball fight at break, though,” said Abbie, scratching her knee, “It’s as if she hates joy.”

“Pretty sure it was Mischa Lewis who told her,” replied Johnny, “She was telling everyone to stop earlier.  Haven’t you got anything better to do?” he added, imitating Mischa’s high-pitched whine.

“Mischa Lewis!” declared Amelia, “I can’t stand her!  She thinks she’s some sort of wise, mature… oracle, but as soon as she opens her mouth I want to punch her in it!”

Natalie listened with interest.  Mischa Lewis was the kind of person who made your heart sink every time you saw her.  Nine times out of ten, you’d have a perfectly nice, normal conversation with her, but the tenth time, she’d decide you needed a lecture on how to improve yourself before you drove everyone around you away with your terrible behaviour.  Natalie wasn’t sure if she wanted to punch her for that, exactly, but it was nice to hear someone else being annoyed, too.

Amelia made an irritated noise, like a kettle letting off steam.  “It’s the mouth, with that underbite, and that accent, and that… smugness, for want of a better word.”

Johnny held up his hands, as if in surrender.  “OK, I admit that I do find Mischa the slightest bit attractive…”  Amelia whacked him on the arm, and he laughed.  “Hey, she’s a goddess compared to that beast Frankie Vernon!”

“Ha!  True!”  Amelia settled back down.

“But the intellectual side…  Yeah, that raises alarm bells.”

“What I want to know is, how come boys think she’s so great when she’s got no boobs?”  Amelia straightened up and waved her arms.  “They all say they want big boobs and then they go out with stick insects!”

The others laughed, and Natalie sat back a little.  If she hadn’t moved her head in exactly the right way, she wouldn’t have been the one to see it.

Just beyond the playing fields, in one of the roads outside school, a white alligator reared its head up from the snow, baring its fangs at an unsuspecting populace.  It would have been impossible yesterday, when the pavements were bare and grimy.  It should have been impossible today, but Amelia, Abbie, and that older guy, David, had come together to bring it into the world.  The idea and the execution couldn’t have taken more than an hour, but it was one of the most beautiful things Natalie had ever seen.

When you met people who could do something like that, you wanted to keep them around for as long as possible.

(To be continued)

For a moment, Mariam was completely dumbstruck.  “What?”

“If you go to the police, I’ll just say you did it,” said Gavin.

If Mariam had been thinking clearly, she’d probably have decided that this was an empty threat.  She’d probably have considered that she had an alibi for last night, and Gavin didn’t.  She’d probably have considered that Gavin had more of a motive than she did, and that the murder weapon, whatever and wherever it was, probably had his fingerprints all over it.  But she didn’t have time to think about any of that until later.  Right now, the only thing on her mind was sheer, boiling-hot rage.

I was going to help you, you ungrateful little twat!

She thought she saw something change in his face, as if he’d heard the words that had just come out of his mouth and realised how they sounded.  She didn’t have much time to notice it, though.  There was a pile of books on the nearest surface, big hardbacks that you could use to crush insects, and with one long arc of her arm Mariam swept them up and hurled them at Gavin’s chest.  It didn’t knock him to his knees like she’d hoped, but it did make him stumble back a couple of steps so she could push past him and run out into the maze of bookshelves.

She ran, zig-zagging through the shop so she’d be harder to catch, dodging the little dips in the floor, jumping over the unexpected steps that came out of nowhere, but Gavin wasn’t trying to catch up with her at all.  He must have run in a straight line, because as soon as Mariam was within sight of the front door, she saw him standing there.  She shrunk back behind the shelves, hoping he hadn’t spotted her.

He flicked the latch closed so that no more customers could get in, then turned around and held something in the air.  “Mariam!” he called out, “I’ve got my dad’s lighter!”  His hands shook as he held it, but he managed to press the button and summon up a tiny, two-second flame.  Even that was far too much of a risk in a building full of dry paper and dead ends, though, so Mariam stepped out to face him. Maybe she could talk some sense into him after all.

“What do you want, Gavin?”  Her voice came out calmer than she’d expected.  A low, grumbly, I’m-sick-of-this kind of voice, as if he was a small kid throwing a hissy-fit instead of a teenager threatening to burn down a shop.

“I told you,” he said, and she could tell he was clenching his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering, “I want to go away and start over.  Somewhere else.”

“And you’re going to start your new life by burning your only friend to death?”

“Shut up!” he screamed, eyes screwed up tight, “Shut up!”

“Why did you think any of this was a good idea, Gavin?  You could have…”

He lunged at her.  Despite herself, she took a step back- Gavin might not have been the most physically intimidating person, but if he could break his father’s neck then he could probably do some serious damage to her as well.  But before she knew what had happened, her foot missed the ground and she tipped all the way over, falling and hitting her elbow on the floor.  She’d tripped over one of those unexpected steps.

Gavin saw what happened and tried to keep his balance, but he was leaning too far forward to do it.  He stumbled and threw out a hand, landing on top of Mariam’s legs.  The lighter, still flickering, fell sideways, into the nearest bookshelf.

For a moment, they both stared, mesmerised, as the books began to glow and darken, consumed by the flames.

Mariam was the first to snap out of it.  She shoved Gavin away, got to her feet, and ran.  She was going in the opposite direction to the door, but as long as it got her away from the fire, that was OK.  She could circle round and get to it that way.  This place was a bloody maze, but she’d been working here for five months.  She knew her way around.

*

Mariam ended up making that anonymous phone call after all.  She told the fire brigade that she’d seen smoke coming out of Swordpoint Books just off the High Street, and it looked pretty bad.  She hadn’t bothered to say any more than that- Gavin would have to explain it when they got there.  She hadn’t seen him come out, but she’d left the front door open for him.  He’d be fine.

She left the phonebox as soon as she’d hung up, just in case they did manage to trace it and sent someone along to catch the caller in the act.  From here, it was just a short walk to her house.  Her clothes still smelt of smoke, but her parents would still be at work and her siblings never noticed much.  When word got around about the fire at Swordpoint Books, she’d just say it had started after she left.  It was past closing time anyway.

Mariam hoped the fire brigade would assume that Mr Bridger had died in the fire.  She might not have liked Gavin much anymore, but… well, everyone deserved a new start.  As long as he didn’t try to drag her name into this, she’d keep quiet about it.

Swordpoint Books had been like nowhere else on Earth.  When you thought about it, that was probably a good thing.

The End

They opened the shop.  Customers came in and wandered about, becoming little more than rustling noises in distant aisles until they emerged with something to buy.  Money went into the till.  And around once an hour, Mariam found herself standing by the break room door, as if she’d been drawn back by a magnet.

It was locked- she knew that because she’d tried it.  She was pretty sure the keys were in one of the drawers of the front desk, but she hadn’t checked.  Gavin had been behind the desk most of today, and he’d want to know what she was up to.

What was she up to, anyway?  When she’d tried the doorknob, she’d told herself that she was just checking to make sure that customers couldn’t wander in, but that wasn’t true.  The actual reason, as simple as it was ghoulish, was that Mariam wanted to see the body.  Not out of morbid fascination (at least, she didn’t think so), but because, until she saw it, she wouldn’t completely believe it was there.  The longer the day went on, the more she felt as if she was having a dream, one of those weird ones where nothing worked the way it should and you woke up feeling really uneasy without knowing why.  Actually seeing the damn thing might be enough to shock her back into reality.  Until then, part of her would suspect that Gavin was playing an elaborate, tasteless joke on her.

It was half an hour before closing time when Mariam saw her chance.  A customer went up to Gavin and asked him to help her find the newest Maeve Binchy, and as soon as they were out of sight, Mariam went behind the desk and opened the drawer.  Sure enough, there, lying on top of all the paper and debris, was a ring of keys.

Instead of going straight to the break room, she palmed the keys and waited behind the desk for a few minutes.  Gavin would have fewer questions about why she was standing behind the desk than about why she was sneaking about behind the desk.  This way, she was just making sure it wasn’t unmanned.  When Gavin came back, he gave her a grateful smile, and she came out from behind the desk, supposedly stepping aside so that he could go back.  She didn’t run for the break room door.  She walked along at a professional clip, as if she’d been asked to sort out an issue on the other side of the shop.

The door was shabby, blue, and completely unassuming.  There was no strange smell, there was no sinister vibe, there was no disturbing background music.  Mariam had it open before she even had time to prepare for it.

Mr Bridger was in there, alright.

He could almost have just been sleeping in his chair.  Almost, because Mariam found it hard to imagine him being this silent even when he was asleep.  She’d thought that seeing the body would be the thing to bring her back to Earth, but now she was here, it was the silence that did it.  He was definitely dead.  He’d never have been that quiet if he was alive.

Gavin hadn’t covered up his face, and Mariam didn’t dare to look directly at it.  She took a step forward, looking for a cloth or a blanket or something, and she saw something out of the corner of her eye.  There was something wrong with Mr Bridger’s neck.

She went round to the back of the chair, and looked properly.  His head was slumped to one side.  No, not just slumped- bent.  As if it had suddenly…

As if someone had…

Gavin.

Of course he had.  Why wouldn’t he?  He’d probably wanted to do it for years.  And no wonder he hadn’t wanted to tell anyone his dad was dead.  Why had he even told her?  Why hadn’t he just run off last night?  Wasn’t there money in the till from yesterday?  There must have been!  Why had…?

Mariam took a deep breath.  She crouched down and looked at the floor, trying to feel less light-headed.  They were going to have to work something out.  They couldn’t just leave him here- someone would find him and work out what had happened.  They had to…  Mariam didn’t know what they had to do, but they needed to work it out as soon as possible.

She straightened up, and saw Gavin standing in the doorway.

She met his eyes.  For a moment, neither of them said anything.  Once again, Mariam tried to work out the one perfect thing to say.  She might have actually managed it this time, if Gavin hadn’t spoken first.

“I’ll just say you did it,” he said.

(To Be Concluded)

At school the next day, all Mariam could think about was her shift that afternoon.

“He’ll be in a better mood then,” Gavin had said, but better than what?  Better than flinging two yards of steel across the room?  Better than almost stabbing his son through the wrists with fifty rusty nails?  There were a lot of things that were better than the way Mr Bridger had behaved yesterday that were still pretty damn horrible in their own right.  The way Mr Bridger behaved every other day, for a start.

Half of it was fear, the not knowing what would happen this afternoon and whether she’d be able to deal with it.  The other half was Gavin.  Her mind kept going back to it, the way he’d looked at the floor instead of at her.  The night stretching out ahead of him, dark and empty, with nothing to do but pray that his father’s path didn’t cross his before morning.  There was a sour, aching knowledge of how unfair this was.  Gavin was a good person, but he’d been given that dark, empty night anyway.  It was wrong, so wrong that it made the whole universe seem out of joint.  Mariam would have given just about anything to put it right.

As she turned onto the side road near the High Street, Mariam steeled herself for something unpleasant.  She didn’t expect to see Gavin sitting on the kerb just outside Swordpoint Books, waiting for her.  In the shop window, the shutters were down and the “closed” sign was up.

“Gavin?” she called out, “What’s going on?”

He leapt to his feet as soon as he saw her.  “Thank God you’re here.”  He put a hand on her upper arm to guide her into the shop.  “Quick, come in.”

Mariam held up a hand, and took a good look at him.  He was pale, much more so than usual, with big shadows under his eyes.  He hadn’t looked this shaken when she’d last seen him.  And what could possibly have happened that was worse than what had happened yesterday?  “Gavin, seriously, what’s going on?”

His eyes darted from side to side.  “I can’t tell you out here.  Let’s go into the shop.”  He opened the door and stood aside for her to go in.

She could tell there was something wrong as soon as Gavin closed the door behind them.  It was completely silent.  No smoker’s coughs, no low, grumbling breaths, no loud smacks of the lips.  No sound out here, and no sound from behind the door of the break room.  It was as if every trace of Mr Bridger had departed from Swordpoint Books.

“He’s dead,” said Gavin, “I found him in the break room this morning.”

Mariam stared at him.  It’s a joke, she thought, It’s got to be.  “What?  How?”

Gavin shrugged.  “Heart attack?  A stroke, maybe?”

“Didn’t the doctors say?”  Mariam hadn’t moved from the spot since they’d got inside.  Part of her thought she should step forward and pull him into a hug- if any other friend of hers had told her their dad had died, she’d have done that before asking stupid questions- but another part thought that would be the most hypocritical thing she could possibly do.  She’d probably wished Mr Bridger dead fifty times last night.

Gavin didn’t reply.  He just looked at her, face completely blank.

“Well?  Didn’t they?”  But even before she said it, Mariam was pretty sure she knew what the answer was going to be.

“I haven’t told anyone,” Gavin said quietly, “He’s still in there.”

There were two or three sets of shelves in between them and the break room door, but Mariam looked in that direction anyway, as if she thought its new ghastly aura was going to penetrate through everything else.  Mr Bridger was dead.  There was a dead body in this building, less than twenty yards away.  Mariam should have been scared, or disgusted, or something other than vaguely cold and queasy.  She swallowed as sharply as she could.  “Why not?”  It came out as a whisper.  She wasn’t sure if she’d meant it to.

Gavin held his arms out helplessly.  “I don’t know.”

“Well… we’ll do it now, OK?”  Mariam felt in her coat pockets for her dad’s old phone- he’d given it to her a couple of months ago, for emergencies.  “Do you know what number we need to call?  I guess 999 wouldn’t be…”

Gavin’s hand shot out and rested on Mariam’s wrist.

She stopped looking.  “What?”

“Please don’t.  Not yet.”

Mariam took her hands out of her pockets.  “Gavin, someone needs to…”

“Yeah, but… I don’t want to be here when they do.”  He took in a long breath.  “This is my only chance to get away.”

Once again, Mariam looked in the direction of the break room door, and she thought about what was behind it.  They couldn’t just leave it like that.  They couldn’t.  But here was Gavin, with his big blue eyes boring into her, begging her to hear him out.

“Whoever comes to collect him is going to take one look at me and call Social Services,” said Gavin, “And the next thing you know, they’ll put me in a foster home halfway across the country.  I’ll have to start all over again with nothing.”

“Well, what’s the alternative?” asked Mariam, still whispering, “We can’t leave him there forever.”

Gavin shook his head.  “Not forever.  Just for today.  I need a little money and a little head start.  That’s all I’m asking for.”

Mariam shook her head.  She was completely lost here.

“Let’s open up the shop this afternoon.  We’ll get customers.  With any luck, someone’ll buy something expensive.  And after closing time, we can split the money from the till, and I’ll be gone.  Off to wherever I want.”  A wistful look crossed his face.  “Then after a couple of hours, you can call the police and give them an anonymous tip.  That way, he’ll still get found.”

Mariam wanted to say something sensible, but her brain wouldn’t cooperate.  All she could think was, That might actually work.  She’d use the payphone at the end of the road- that way they couldn’t trace her number- and she’d tell them that there was a weird smell coming from Swordpoint Books.  Or that she thought she’d seen intruders.  Or…

“But where are you going to go?” she asked Gavin.

He shrugged.  “I don’t know.  Away from here.”  For a moment, the words You could come with me hung in the air, unspoken, and Mariam honestly didn’t know how she’d have replied to that.  She had a family.  They’d miss her.

But he hadn’t said it yet, so she didn’t have to think about it right now.  “OK,” she said, looking him in the eye, “We can open up the shop.  Just for the afternoon.”

A relieved smile broke out on Gavin’s face.  Before Mariam knew what was going on, he stepped forward, took her face in his hands, and kissed her.

(To Be Continued)

(Like “Isaac vs the Swimming Pool,” I previously posted an early part of this and then never got round to posting the rest.  Mainly because I never got round to writing the rest.  So here it is now.)

April 2002

Swordpoint Books was on one of the little roads leading off the High Street, and it was like nowhere else on Earth.  It seemed to be a series of narrow paths leading through a maze of shelves, all shiny steel and well over six-foot high, so if you were at one end of the shop and your friends were at another, you’d have to rely on the sound of each other’s voices to find each other.  Add in the unexpected steps and slopes placed at random intervals along the aisles, and the place was a blatant safety hazard in about a dozen different ways.

Not that Mariam cared.  Mr Bridger could have released a man-eating tiger into the Romance section, and Mariam would just have barricaded herself into Sci Fi/Fantasy and carried on reading.  And that was just as well, because she could definitely picture Mr Bridger doing that.

Mariam had had five months to get used to the acoustics of Swordpoint Books, so she could tell that Mr Bridger was three aisles away.  Far enough not to panic, but too close to risk picking up an interesting book from the shelf and flicking through it.  You weren’t really in trouble until he got to your aisle, because all you could see over the bookshelves was the top of people’s heads, and that was if you were lucky (and tall).  That meant that you couldn’t see him coming, either, but that was OK because Mr Bridger was one of the noisiest men Mariam had ever met.  No matter where he was in the store, you could hear him move around- the grumpy stamp of his feet, the heavy, snarling breathing, the occasional smack of his lips as he looked at something and thought.  He was like a minotaur moving through his own stainless-steel labyrinth.

Two aisles away, Mariam heard him pounce on Gavin.  “Just what do you think you’re playing at?”

Gavin’s voice was gentle, hesitant, and at least fifteen decibels quieter.  “Look, if you’re talking about the displays, I just thought…”

“Where’s my paper, Gavin?  The one that was on the front desk??”

“Um…”

“It’s a simple enough question, Gavin.  Where’s.  My.  Paper?”

There was a lot of staff turnover at Swordpoint Books.  People would apply, start work, realise that they weren’t being paid enough to put up with Mr Bridger, and quit.  Usually within two weeks, although the record was half an hour.  Only Mariam and Gavin stayed.  Mariam because there were six kids in her house, and she was pretty sure the only thing stopping both her parents from working themselves into an early grave was the fact that the oldest three earned enough to buy most of their own school supplies.  Gavin because he was just plain stuck.  She was pretty sure he didn’t even get paid.

“Dad, listen…  It was two days old, it had been in the exact same place since yesterday…”

“I didn’t ask you how old it was, Gavin.  I asked where it was.”

“Last week you got mad at me for not keeping the front desk tidy…”

“I didn’t ask you what happened last week!” Mr Bridger screamed.  Mariam could practically hear the spit spraying out all over poor Gavin’s face.  “I asked you what happened to my fucking paper!”

It was an odd thing about Mr Bridger- no matter how angry and out of-control he seemed, he always managed to save the swearwords for when he really wanted to scare you.  Anyway, Mariam couldn’t stop herself.  “I threw it out,” she called, as calm as possible while still being loud enough for Mr Bridger to hear her.

It seemed to have worked.  There was a short pause, and then the stamping footsteps started up again, coming closer and closer until Mr Bridger appeared at the end of Mariam’s aisle.  He was a man who seemed to be all reds and yellows- red cheeks, yellow teeth, red strawberry nose, yellow whites in his eyes, red bags under his eyes, yellowing shirt that Mariam suspected he’d been wearing for the last three days.  “Who the fuck told you to throw it out?”

Mariam took a deep breath.  “Like Gavin said, it was just last week you told us to keep the desk tidy…”

“You threw out my paper.”  Mr Bridger was bearing down on her now, his cheese-and-cigarettes breath wafting in her face.  “My property.”

Mariam looked up at him, not daring to move a muscle.  “Yes.”

“That’s what you do in your house, then?  Help ourselves to other people’s things?”

“We throw out newspapers when they’re two days old, yes.”  Mr Bridger was always speculating about what they did in her house.  Among her people.

Mr Bridger stared at her, still treating her to wafts of his breath, but he didn’t do anything.  And what can you do? thought Mariam, Sack me?  Not a chance.  You wouldn’t be able to scream at me anymore if you did.  Of course, if she was Gavin, he’d have already made a dark remark about discussing the matter very carefully after closing time, but she wasn’t Gavin, and that was why it was better for her to take the blame.

“Well, we’re not in your house now,” he said eventually, “I’m paying you to be here.  You owe me respect.”

Mariam said nothing.

“You agree with me, then?” he said, a little louder, “You owe me respect?”

“Yes,” said Mariam.

For a moment, she was worried he was going to make her repeat the words back to him, just to be sure, but instead he backed off and disappeared into the aisles beyond.  Mariam waited until his footsteps were a safe distance away, then went to find Gavin.

He was backed up against a row of reference books, hunched over in an attempt to make himself look smaller.  Gavin was only an inch or two shorter than his father, but at times like this, he seemed about half his size.  “You didn’t need to do that,” he murmured.

“It was that or listen to him screech at you for the next hour,” said Mariam, keeping her voice quiet enough to stay within this aisle, where Mr Bridger couldn’t catch it.

Gavin breathed in, set his mouth in a straight line, and looked away from Mariam.  He knew she was right.

Mariam and Gavin went to different schools, on different sides of town.  If it hadn’t been for Swordpoint Books, they’d never have met, so there was at least one good reason to put up with Mr Bridger.  Mariam didn’t have much patience for the boys at her school- most of them thought that drawing cartoon willies on their desks was the last word in humour- but you could have an actual conversation with Gavin.  Usually either about books or how much they hated Mr Bridger, but they were conversations, and Mariam felt better for having them.  Gavin was her friend.  And friends didn’t let friends get bollocked by their dads just for throwing away old newspapers.

They heard the door to the break room creak open, then shut. They relaxed a little.  Mr Bridger had gone off to sulk and smoke a whole packet of Silk Cut.

“He just left it out so he could pick a fight over it,” said Mariam.

“Of course,” said Gavin, “Even he doesn’t take three days to read the Sun.”

“Maybe he was just really attached to Thursday’s Page Three girl.”

Gavin made a face.

Mariam stood against the bookcase next to him.  Their eyes met, and they both let out an exaggerated, exasperated sigh.  “The working life,” said Gavin.

Mariam shrugged.  “My mum says that your first job should be as crappy as possible.  That way, for the rest of your life, you appreciate the jobs that aren’t.”

“If I even get to have another job,” grumbled Gavin, “Knowing Dad, I’ll still be working here in ten years’ time.”  He sighed.  “He’s already told me I needn’t think he’s paying for university for me.”

“So you’ll get a loan.  That’s what most people do.”  She was about to suggest that Gavin get in touch with his mother and ask her to help out with his fees, but stopped herself just in time.  The former Mrs Bridger had run off with a guy from her job eight years ago, and if she hadn’t bothered to take Gavin with her (at least for long enough to drop him off with a family member who screamed less), then it was probably too much to expect her to fork out a few thousand pounds for him now.

Gavin laughed.  “Nothing’s ever impossible for you, is it, Mariam?”

She patted him on the shoulder.  “Won’t be impossible for you, either.  You’ll see.”

They heard the front door open, and Gavin moved off towards the desk in case the customer needed help.  But before he disappeared around the corner, he looked over his shoulder and gave Mariam a grin that made her feel warm all over.

*

Mariam’s Monday afternoon shift was going pretty well until one of the shelves collapsed.  She was on the other side of the shop when it happened, but she heard the bang loud and clear.  She was pretty sure that if she’d looked over the top of the shelves at that moment, she’d have seen a massive cloud of dust escaping into the air.

It was honestly a miracle that that particular shelf had stayed up as long as it had- it looked like someone had been stuffing the thickest hardbacks they could find into it for the last five years.  When Mariam got there, most of the aisle was covered with books, as if they’d burst out on their own in a bid for freedom, scattering far and wide.  And on top of one of the bigger piles was a shiny little bit of metal, looking sorry for itself.

Naturally, Mr Bridger had looked for any reason he possibly could to blame Mariam and Gavin for the collapse.  They should have noticed that it was getting too full.  They should have rushed to hold it in as soon as it started to break.  They should have kept the whole thing together with their until-now-undiscovered telekinetic powers.  Even Mr Bridger had to admit defeat eventually, though, and he told Gavin and Mariam to pick up the books while he tried to work out how to fix the shelf.  Mariam watched out of the corner of her eye as he rotated it in his hands, tried to jam it back in, gave up, and started the whole thing over again, swearing under his breath the whole time.

Eventually, he turned it around one more time, then crouched down and began loading it up with books.  Once he was done, he got to his feet, holding the now-full shelf out lengthways.  “Gavin!  Come and get the other end!”

Gavin stood up and reached out to catch the other end of the shelf as Mr Bridger swung it towards him… then flinched away at the last moment, causing Mr Bridger to stumble and the books to fall back down to the floor.

Mr Bridger looked at him in disbelief.  “What the fuck do you think you’re playing at, Gavin?”

“Dad, it’s covered in rusty nails!”  Gavin pointed, and Mariam saw what he meant.  It wasn’t just the nails hanging out of the shelf, either- that whole end looked like one big piece of sharp, jagged metal.  There might have been a way to grab hold of it without hurting yourself, but no way would Gavin have worked it out in the time his dad had given him.

“I told you to catch the other end,” snarled Mr Bridger, “I expect you to catch the other end!”

“They’d have gone right into my hand!  Look!”

Mr Bridger roared, and flung the broken shelf across the room.  It hit a shelf in the next aisle, and stuck there, its loose nails tearing grooves in a couple of the thicker books.  His right hand free, he raised it above his head as he turned on Gavin.

Without even thinking about it, Mariam stepped in between them.

Mr Bridger froze, his hand still raised.  Go on, hit me, thought Mariam, I dare you.  The moment my mum sees me with a black eye, you’ll be as good as dead.

Mr Bridger lowered his hand.  His face was screwed up in disappointment and frustration- Mariam thought he looked like a constipated pig.  “That’s what I get for hiring from fucking Al Qaeda,” he said, and stormed off down the aisles.  After a moment or two, Mariam heard the break room door slam behind him.

“You should go,” said Gavin, looking at the floor.

“Oh, come on.”  Mariam put a hand on his shoulder, but he shook it off.  “At least let me help you pick the rest of these up,” she said, gesturing to the piles of books still on the floor.

“No.  Trust me, it’ll be better if you…”  Gavin took a long, snuffling breath, and looked up at Mariam.  His eyes didn’t look red, but Mariam was still pretty sure she knew why he’d been looking at the floor.  “I’ll handle this.  I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon, yeah?”

Mariam hesitated for a moment, then decided to say what was on her mind.  “If you wanted to stay at mine tonight…”

“No.”  Gavin was looking at the floor again.  “I’d just have to come back here again afterwards, wouldn’t I?”

There were so many things Mariam wanted to say, but most of the words seemed to die in her throat.  “It’s not right, Gavin.  You don’t deserve this.”

Gavin shook his head.  “Please, Mariam, just…  I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?  He’ll be in a better mood then.”

Mariam wanted to say something, the one perfect thing to convince him to come with her or at least let her stay to help, but that perfect thing probably didn’t exist at all, so she left.  She’d never felt so powerless in her whole life.

(To Be Continued)

(Being a short story I started writing in instalments a few months ago, then forgot about for a bit.  I’m posting the whole thing now.)

(CONTENT WARNING:  This story features some extremely unpleasant subject matter.  Proceed with caution.)

August 1999

Just as they were about to start the second half, Isaac looked up at the stands and spotted Mr Forrest. He hadn’t seen him before, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been there- the Ravens Hall pitch was on a big, open field, and the spectators’ stands were right in front of the sun. Half the time, when you looked in that direction, all you saw was a silhouette in front of a big, yellow burst of light that made your eyeballs ache.

Mr Forrest. Isaac hadn’t seen him in three years. He’d been the PE teacher at Ivy Brook Primary, but then he’d left just before Isaac had gone into Year Five. Isaac wanted to get his attention, maybe get in a little wave before the kick-off, but something made him hold back. He had a weird, guilty feeling, like he knew Mr Forrest wouldn’t be pleased to see him.

Then the coach blew the whistle, and Isaac had other things to focus on. The score going into the second half was one-all, so both teams were ready to risk life and limb just to get to the ball. Isaac managed to get hold of it, at the price of getting his shins hacked to bits by the Mountfitchet boys’ boots, and passed it along to Ben Larson, who got it halfway up the field and passed it to Tommy MacLeod.

Tommy did alright at first, weaving around the Mountfitchet defenders like a pinball. Tommy was a little bit shorter than most of the boys in the Ravens, but that just made him harder to catch. If he’d just made it another yard or two, he could have passed it back to Isaac and everything would have been fine. Instead, one of the Mountfitchet boys moved to tackle him, and Tommy shrank back.

For a moment, Isaac wondered if that was really what he’d seen. Maybe the Mountfitchet boy had been a bit rough with his tackle, and Tommy had just stumbled backwards? Maybe the Mountfitchet boy had even fouled him? But when the coach bellowed across the field, “MacLeod, what are you doing?!?” Isaac knew what had happened. Tommy had seen the Mountfitchet boy coming towards him, he’d panicked and jumped back, and that mistake had cost them the ball. Isaac saw the look of disgust on the coach’s face, and thought about Mr Forrest again.

His memory was a bit fuzzy, but Isaac was pretty sure he’d embarrassed himself in front of Mr Forrest somehow. Not right before Mr Forrest had left, but at the end of Year Two or Year Three, so that every time Isaac had seen him for the next few years, he’d got that hot, squirmy feeling in his stomach and wanted to hide.

There had been… some kind of game? Had it been in a PE lesson, or at an after-school club? Isaac couldn’t remember exactly. All he knew was that he’d been too much of a wimp to join in, and that Mr Forrest had given him exactly the same look of disgust that the coach was giving Tommy right now.

Isaac didn’t know whether to feel sorry for Tommy or to kick him in the shin. On the one hand, he knew what it was like to be the person who screwed things up for everyone else, but on the other, he’d worked very hard to stop being that person. He’d managed to stop being scared of stupid things (spiders, the dark… even escalators, for a while), and to join in and make friends. For the last few years, he’d barely thought of how he used to be when he was younger. He’d been too busy living his life.

A cheer went up from the stand. In barely ten seconds. Mountfitchet had managed to get the ball all the way up to the pitch and into the Ravens’ goal. Isaac cringed. He had a feeling that Tommy was never going to live this down.

June 1994

Isaac had had a lot of fun finding and eating bits of popcorn people had dropped on the floor, until his mum caught him doing it and got him to stop.

“I can’t believe it,” she snapped, “I thought you were old enough to know not to eat things that have been on the ground.”

Isaac fidgeted. Mum was right, he’d known it was a stupid idea even as he’d done it… but popcorn tasted really, really good, and he didn’t have any of his own.

Mum and Dad were at one of the metal tables on the upper half of the playground, the ones that were covered in little puddles of beer. Further down, there were face-painting stalls, a bring and buy, and a bouncy castle, but Isaac had been to all three, and now he was bored. And now he didn’t even have popcorn to console him.

“If I can’t trust you on your own, you’ll have to spend the rest of the evening sat with me.” One look at the table told you what a dire threat this was. The chairs were the metal kind that drained all the heat out of your legs and made you die of frostbite even though it was June, and the table itself was covered in beery grime, so you wouldn’t even be able to lean on it without making your elbows stink for the rest of the night. “Is that going to have to happen?”

Isaac looked down at the ground, which was covered in popcorn that he wouldn’t get to taste. “No. Sorry, Mum.”

“Right!” Mum gave a nod of satisfaction, and turned back to the table. Isaac trudged off, doing his best to look trustworthy in case she turned round to check on him.

He wandered towards the dancefloor (really a big patch of tarmac with disco lights flashing all around it), wondering if he should wait for a song he liked and join in. There was a little stall nearby selling drinks and snacks, but Isaac had mostly run out of money, and besides, they were only selling those weird fruit drinks in the square containers, the ones that always seemed to go down wrong and make you cough and get a sore throat.
He looked around and spotted the fortune teller’s tent. He probably didn’t have enough money for that either. Besides, he didn’t think he really wanted to see the future. He didn’t like the thought of seeing himself and his friends as old people.

“Hello, Isaac,” said a voice, right in his ear. Isaac jumped, and Mr Forrest laughed. He was always doing stuff like that, joking around, like the time he’d told Isaac’s class that they’d be doing parachute jumps in PE, but it turned out what he meant was holding up that big red bit of cloth they kept at the back of the hall and jumping under it. “Keeping busy?”

Isaac smiled up at him. “Yeah.”

Mr Forrest scratched his nose. “So I suppose you won’t have time to come out to the swimming pool with me?”

Now, that was interesting. The swimming pool was in a little building just on the other side of the vegetable garden, and Isaac had never been inside. “I thought you had to be in Year Six to go in the swimming pool?”

Mr Forrest slapped him on the back. “Not tonight. You’ll be with me, so it’s allowed. Unless you’re too busy…”

“No!” said Isaac quickly, “I’ll come!” He liked swimming, and he loved the thought of being the only kid in Year Two who knew what the swimming pool looked like. He could imagine it right now- the other kids wouldn’t believe him at first, but then when they all got to Year Six and were allowed in the swimming pool, they’d look around and realise that Isaac had described it perfectly. He’d get four years’ worth of respect, all at once.

Mr Forrest grinned. “You sure?”

“Yeah!”

“Alright, then!” Mr Forrest slapped him on the back again. “Come on, I’ll get you some icecream on the way.”

They all knew that there were going to be some serious fireworks once they got back into the changing rooms, and the coach did not disappoint. “What were you doing out there, Tommy?” he roared, “Two-nil down! All because of you!”

“It wasn’t because of me!” squeaked Tommy. He was trying to sound defiant, but he couldn’t hide how much the coach was scaring him. All of a sudden, he looked about two years younger. All around him, his teammates stood with their backs against the walls, looking at him as if he was something they’d scraped off their shoes.

“Mountfitchet would never have got the ball if it hadn’t been for you!” roared the coach, “Do you even know how to play football? Because the first rule is, ‘Don’t run away from the ball like it’s about to explode’!”

Isaac’s stomach was twisting up, and he didn’t know why. It was almost as if he was the one who was being yelled at, not Tommy. Maybe because he’d seen Mr Forrest earlier, and remembered what it was like to be little and useless. There was a time when he’d been the one who…

“It wasn’t my fault!” said Tommy, “That Mountfitchet boy was going right for my shins!”

The coach raised his eyebrows. “Right for your shins, was it? And what would have happened if he’d reached them? Would your legs have fallen off?” A couple of the other boys laughed nervously. The coach pointed to Isaac, who wished he hadn’t. “Look at Greenie over there! He got a chunk taken out of his legs in the first two minutes, but he still kept playing and he still managed to hold onto the ball!” Isaac tried not to meet Tommy’s eyes, or the coach’s, for that matter. He just wanted this whole thing to be over. “Now why can he do that and not you?”

“I don’t know!” said Tommy, “I’m sorry!”

The coach pulled his lips tight, and shook his head. “No. Sorry’s not going to cut it, Tommy. Thanks to you, we might have lost this match. You might have lost us a place in the league.”

“I only lost the ball once!” Tommy’s face was turning red. “Ben and Adam missed two goals in the last three minutes!”

Isaac cringed. He didn’t need to look at anyone’s faces to know how badly that had gone down- there was already a disgruntled murmur coming up as if from the ground. Even if they had missed a shot or two at the goal this time, Ben Larson and Adam Sears were two of the best players at Ravens Hall, and they got a lot of respect around here. There was no way that Tommy was coming back from this.

The coach turned to the rest of the team. “Did you hear that., boys? Tommy’s got some critiques of your playing!”

There were angry murmurs and scowls from every direction. The coach continued. “Well, if he’s allowed to give you feedback, I think we’re allowed to give him some, don’t you? So here it is: Missing a goal when you’ve actually made the effort to get the ball that far up the pitch is completely different from letting the ball go the moment things get a little bit difficult. Larson and Sears are head and shoulders above you as players. You should be ashamed.”

There was a chorus of “yeah”s from the other boys. Isaac just felt sick.

The coach pointed to the exit. “I don’t want you on the pitch in the second half. In fact, I don’t want you on this team anymore. I’ve got no room for people who point the finger at others instead of taking responsibility for their mistakes. Pack your things and get out.”

Tommy jumped to his feet, knocking over the bench behind him. Isaac couldn’t tell whether or not he’d done that on purpose, but it didn’t matter- if it had been an accident, nobody would ever believe it. “Fine!” snapped Tommy, a tremble in his voice, “You’re going to lose anyway! And it’s not because of me; it’s because you’re all crap!”

And, before anyone else could say anything, he turned and ran out of the exit, not bothering to pick up his bags or even change out of his playing strip. Isaac didn’t blame him. In Tommy’s position, he wouldn’t have wanted to stay here a minute longer, either.

They managed to score in the second half (Ben Larson, redeeming himself), but by the time the final whistle blew, the Ravens were still two-one down. Towards the end, Isaac glanced up at the stands to see if he could spot Mr Forrest again, but he wasn’t there. Maybe Ravens Hall just hadn’t lived up to his standards.

Mr Forrest had got Isaac one of those blue ice-pops, and by the time they got to the pool building, it had melted enough for him to start sucking up the juice from down the sides. It meant having a mouthful of plastic while you did it, but it was worth it for the taste.

“I meant to ask,” said Mr Forrest, as they got to the front door, “Were you upset about something earlier?”

Isaac shrugged. “Not really. My mum told me to stop eating popcorn off the floor, that’s all.” He tested the ice-pop with his teeth, to see if it was soft enough for him to bite through yet.

“I meant earlier, in school. Something seemed to be bothering you.”

Isaac thought back through the day. Nothing really stood out as upsetting- the worst thing that had happened was that he’d had to do division in Maths, which he always hated the most. But even that had just been annoying- it wasn’t anything more than that.

Mr Forrest put his hand on Isaac’s shoulder. “You know you can always talk to me if there’s something bothering you, right? You can talk to me about anything. I know that sometimes you can feel alone, even with people you love very much.”

Isaac shrugged again, and took a bite out of his ice-pop.

They reached the door, and Mr Forrest got a set of keys out of his pocket. “Do me a favour- don’t tell the headteacher about this, OK?”

“Why not?” asked Isaac.

“Well, she didn’t want anybody using it tonight.” He unlocked the door and wrenched it open. “But I say that what she doesn’t know can’t hurt her, eh, Isaac?” He winked, and Isaac winked back. Normally he’d stay away from things that could get him into trouble, but this was different. It wasn’t a boy from his class who wanted to do something naughty, it was a teacher. That made it exciting instead of scary.

Isaac crept through the door like a secret agent, and Mr Forrest followed, closing it behind him. “Better not put too many lights on. We don’t want them seeing it over there, or they’ll all want to come.”
Isaac dashed out to the side of the water. It looked mysterious and inky in the dark, as if there might be sea monsters under there. For a moment, that thought made Isaac want to back away… but Mr Forrest was there, and he was letting Isaac in on a secret that none of the other kids knew. He couldn’t just throw that away because of a few monsters that weren’t even real.

Mr Forrest clapped him on the back. “Last one in’s a rotten egg, eh?”

Isaac looked at the water. “Are we going to go in with all our clothes on?”

“No, no. Your mum wouldn’t be happy if you got those new trousers wet through, would she?”

“But I don’t have any swimming trunks.”

“Neither do I! We’ll have to make do with what we have!”

Isaac frowned. “What… Just go in in our underpants?”

Mr Forrest winked at him again. “Well, you could leave your pants on, but, honestly, to do it correctly…”

And that was when Isaac’s heart sank.

“I think Tommy was up in the woods earlier,” said Ben Larson.

Isaac turned his head sideways to look at him properly. The three of them- him, Ben, and Matthew Walker- were lying on top of the sea wall, trying to soak up the sun. It was the kind of day when you drowned in sweat if you did anything else. “What, around the campsite?”

“Yeah,” said Ben, “Like he’s got any right to it.”

The campsite was actually just a little clearing in the woods up near the football pitch, with piles of wood and other things you could build hide-outs with. All the Ravens Hall boys used it. “How do you know?” asked Isaac, “Did you see him?” Isaac hadn’t seen him since he’d been kicked off the team, and that had been nearly a week ago.

Ben shook his head. “There were sweet wrappers all around the platform. Skittles. He was sitting there eating while no-one else was there.”

Isaac thought for a moment. It sounded right. Tommy did like Skittles. “Maybe he was hoping some of us would show up. Maybe he wanted to apologise.”

Ben snorted in contempt.

Isaac rolled onto his back, and folded his arms behind his head. It had been a good day. Earlier, a couple of girls from school had come along and teased them in the way girls did sometimes (“My mate Kerry says you look like the guy from A1”), and they’d had a fun twenty minutes bantering back and forth before the girls had had to go off and meet someone at the pier. Later on they’d go to Ben’s house to read books and see if they could get Ben’s older brother to let them watch his South Park videos, but right now, there was just the sun, sizzling Isaac’s skin in a weirdly comfortable way, and the sound of the waves lapping gently against the sand. It was the kind of sound you could fall asleep to.

But instead, Isaac’s thoughts drifted over to Mr Forrest, and that evening at the swimming pool.

This had happened quite a few times since he’d seen Mr Forrest last week. He just couldn’t stop thinking about it. He hadn’t forgotten what they’d argued about, exactly, but it had been a long time since he’d really thought about it, so it had taken him a while to call it up. The last time it had come up had probably been in Year Four, when they’d learned about how Olympic athletes in Ancient Greek times did all their sports naked. See, he’d thought with a pang of guilt, You wouldn’t have lasted five minutes as an athlete in the olden days. And then, because no-one liked feeling guilty, he’d put it out of his head and tried to think of something else.

Now Isaac thought, Mr Forrest wanted me to swim naked with him. That’s pretty weird, isn’t it?

It was definitely lucky for Mr Forrest that no-one had come by to check what was going on in the pool. They might have got completely the wrong idea about what he was up to.
Isaac thought about Mr Forrest at last week’s football match, with a bit of annoyance. He had no right to make Isaac feel guilty for wimping out. If anything, he should thank him. Things could have gone pretty badly if he hadn’t, and Mr Forrest would have had no-one to blame but himself.

“What are you waiting for?” asked Mr Forrest.

Isaac was waiting for Mr Forrest to suddenly forget what he’d just said and let him wear whatever he liked into the pool. He’d have been prepared to wait forever, if he could. “I think I’d rather keep my underpants on…”

“Why?”

“Well…” Isaac knew he wouldn’t be able to give Mr Forrest a good reason. If he didn’t already know how it would feel to take off his clothes here and now, about the sick, squirmy feeling he had in his stomach from just thinking about it, then he never would. “It’s a little bit embarrassing…”

There was a long silence, filled only by a dripping sound somewhere over by the deep end, and Mr Forrest just stared at Isaac in disbelief. “Isaac, get a grip on yourself. I’ve seen hundreds of people naked.”

Isaac fidgeted. “Yeah, but… I don’t want to.” It wasn’t a good reason, he knew that. But it was the truth.

“Oh, come on.” Mr Forrest smiled. Isaac wanted him to keep smiling, but he knew that wasn’t going to happen. Mr Forrest would probably never be pleased with him again. “Give it five minutes in the water, and you’ll forget that you have nothing on.”

Nothing on. Isaac’s stomach turned again.

Mr Forrest sighed. “It isn’t because you think it’s dirty, is it?”

It would be so easy to just do what he says, thought Isaac, You’ll only feel bad for a couple of seconds, and then you’ll be in the water. Just be brave for a moment or two. “No… It’s just…”

“Because it’s not dirty.” Mr Forrest definitely sounded angry now. “Some people’s minds are, that’s all.”

Isaac hoped that he wasn’t “some people.” “It’s not just…. I mean, are you going to be naked, too?” For some reason, that would make it worse. So much worse.

There weren’t many lights on, so it was hard to see Mr Forrest’s expression. “Isaac, let me ask you a question. Did it bother you when I put my hand on your shoulder earlier?”

“I guess not…”

“Well, if that didn’t bother you when we both had clothes on, there’s no reason for it to bother you when we don’t, right?” Mr Forrest smiled again. “It’s the same thing either way. Taking your clothes doesn’t change anything, not really.”

Isaac knew it didn’t change anything. He knew he was just being silly. But he couldn’t stop.

“Isaac, you’re being silly about it. You’re not being fair to me. Think about how I feel, after making such an effort for you.”

He looked down at his feet. He bet Mr Forrest wished he hadn’t decided to show him the pool at all, now. “Sorry.”

“I thought you were more grown-up than this. I didn’t think you’d see being naked as something embarrassing to giggle over.”

“Sorry.” Not grown-up. Not grateful. No matter how hard he tried.

“I thought we understood each other, Isaac.”

Isaac said nothing.

“This is your chance to try something new. You’re brave enough to do this, Isaac, I know you are.” Mr Forrest put his hand on Isaac’s shoulder again, and Isaac didn’t even think about what he did next. He just wriggled out from under Mr Forrest’s grip and bolted for the door.

Stupid, Isaac thought, Not grown-up. Not brave. Not fair to Mr Forrest. But no matter what he thought, his legs kept on running, almost as if they were doing it by themselves. Away from the swimming pool, through the vegetable garden, and back onto the playground. For a moment or two, he heard Mr Forrest behind him, shouting for him to come back, but then he stopped. Maybe he’d decided it wasn’t worth it.

Isaac wanted to be brave and grown-up. Maybe one day- say, when he was in Year Six and actually allowed in the swimming pool- he actually would be. But today he wasn’t. Today he’d disappointed Mr Forrest, and he’d disappointed himself, too.

Isaac walked around the dance floor, and went back to the metal tables to sit with his parents for the rest of the night. It was probably what he deserved.

On Tuesday morning, before any of the others showed up, Ben Larson showed Isaac the old equipment shed.

It was just a few dozen yards away from the campsite in the woods. Isaac had probably walked past it hundreds of times, but he’d never really looked at it before now. It was a tiny little box, maybe two metres by three, and its wood had nearly turned black with age and damp. On the door was a big iron padlock, and Ben smiled gleefully as he waved a ring of keys and unlocked it. “They keep them on a hook just round the side.”

“Right,” said Isaac, not really understanding where Ben was going with this. They were in one of the wilder parts of the wood, a tangled little patch of green that was probably full of poison ivy and nettles, and Isaac really wanted to get back to the campsite before bits of him started turning red and bumpy.

Ben opened the door to show the mouldy darkness inside. “So, when Tommy gets here…”

“Wait, Tommy’s coming?”

“Yeah, I called him this morning. He thinks we’re all going to hang out.” Ben’s grin grew wider. “I told him not to worry about the match against Mountfitchet. I said it had all been forgotten about.”

Isaac fidgeted a bit. He was thinking about Mr Forrest again, and lately, whenever he thought about Mr Forrest his skin crawled.

“So the plan is,” said Ben, “We wait around the side of the platform until he gets here, and then we each grab him by the arm and bring him over here so we can lock him in.”

Isaac said nothing.

“We can do it!” said Ben, who looked as if he was about to start jumping up and down in excitement, “We’re both stronger than him- if we work together, he won’t be able to get away! And then…”

“How long are we going to leave him in there?” asked Isaac. His heart was pounding as if he’d just run a whole mile, and all he could think of was Tommy being locked away in the dark, maybe forever, for not being brave and grown-up enough. That was what you deserved, apparently, if you didn’t do exactly what other people said. If you didn’t hurt yourself just to make them happy.

“Maybe overnight. Long enough to teach him a lesson.” Ben’s face twisted into a weird, goblin-like smirk. “You don’t mess with the Ravens and get away with it.”

A thought crossed Isaac’s mind: Mr Forrest would want you to lock Tommy in the shed. He’d say it was the grown-up thing to do. He knew, even as he thought it, that it probably wasn’t true- Mr Forrest hadn’t really cared whether Isaac acted grown-up or not. He was just a dirty old man who’d have said anything to get little kids to take their clothes off. But true or not, it was what finally made Isaac angry enough to do what he did next, which was snatch the keys off Ben, push him into the shed, and lock the door.

Ben started pounding on the door right away- “What are you doing, Greenie?! What the hell do you think you’re playing at?!”- and Isaac took a step back in case he broke it down. He didn’t. Isaac could hear Ben’s fists slamming at the door with all their might, and it didn’t even shudder.

The sudden burst of anger was starting to fade, and Isaac looked at the door in disbelief. It’s not too late to let him out and say it was just a joke, he thought. But it was. It had been too late as soon as he’d seen that smirk on Ben’s face.

For a moment, he thought about throwing the keys into the undergrowth, but instead he hung them up on the nail Ben had shown him. Adam and Matthew and the others would be along soon, and they’d let him out. Ben would probably only have to spend quarter of an hour or so in the shed. Just long enough to teach him a lesson.

Isaac walked away, aiming to be long gone by the time anyone else arrived. He didn’t know if they’d take Ben’s side or his, but it was probably best not to find out face-to-face. He hurried through the woods, practically flying along as the ground slopes downwards, and after about two minutes he nearly crashed right into Tommy MacLeod, who was coming the other way.

Tommy tensed up, as if he thought they were going to fight. “Hi, Isaac,” he said, the words rushing out at seventy miles an hour, “Ben said I could come.”

“I know,” said Isaac, holding his hands up in front of his chest so Tommy could see that he wasn’t going to hit him, “But…”

But he only said that so he could lock you in a mouldy shed overnight.

But you can’t trust that guy.

But why do you care what that moron thinks of you, anyway?

Oh, what the hell- why ruin his morning? Isaac could tell him the gory details later. “But I think I made him pretty mad just now, so I’m making myself scarce,” he finished, “You should, too- he’s the kind of guy who’ll take things out on anyone he can find.”

Tommy gave him a weird, freaked-out kind of smile. “What did you do?”

“He was going to play a mean trick on someone, so I played it on him first.” He clapped Tommy on the back, gently turning him away from the path to the campsite as he did it. “I’ve got better things to do than hang around with someone like that. Come on, let’s go to the beach.”

Tommy shrugged, and went along. As they approached the edge of the woods, Isaac found himself humming under his breath. Yeah, Adam and Matthew might take Ben’s side over his, but they might not. Yeah, Isaac would probably have to quit the Ravens either way, but there were other teams and other sports. Yeah, he’d have to watch his back when school started up again, but that wouldn’t be too difficult. And if he ever saw Mr Forrest again, Mr Forrest would wish he hadn’t.

Satisfied with that, Isaac grinned at Tommy, and began to race him down the hill.

The End

(From the same series as “Isaac vs the Swimming Pool.”  I’ll probably be alternating between the two where updates are concerned.)

(Oh yeah, and my internet’s fixed now.  Hooray!)

April, 2002

Swordpoint Books was on one of the little roads leading off the High Street, and it was like nowhere else on Earth.  It seemed to be a series of narrow paths leading through a maze of shelves, all shiny steel and well over six-foot high, so if you were at one end of the shop and your friends were at another, you’d have to rely on the sound of each other’s voices to find each other.  Add in the unexpected steps and slopes placed at random intervals along the aisles, and the place was a blatant safety hazard in about a dozen different ways.

Not that Mariam cared.  Mr Bridger could have released a man-eating tiger into the Romance section, and Mariam would just have barricaded herself into Sci Fi/Fantasy and carried on reading.  And that was just as well, because she could definitely picture Mr Bridger doing that.

Mariam had had five months to get used to the acoustics of Swordpoint Books, so she could tell that Mr Bridger was three aisles away.  Far enough not to panic, but too close to risk picking up an interesting book from the shelf and flicking through it.  You weren’t really in trouble until he got to your aisle, because all you could see over the bookshelves was the top of people’s heads, and that was if you were lucky (and tall).  That meant that you couldn’t see him coming, either, but that was OK because Mr Bridger was one of the noisiest men Mariam had ever met.  No matter where he was in the store, you could hear him move around- the grumpy stamp of his feet, the heavy, snarling breathing, the occasional smack of his lips as he looked at something and thought.  He was like a minotaur moving through his own stainless-steel labyrinth.

Two aisles away, Mariam heard him pounce on Gavin.  “Just what do you think you’re playing at?”

Gavin’s voice was gentle, hesitant, and at least fifteen decibels quieter.  “Look, if you’re talking about the displays, I just thought…”

“Where’s my paper, Gavin?  The one that was on the front desk??”

“Um…”

“It’s a simple enough question, Gavin.  Where’s.  My.  Paper?”

There was a lot of staff turnover at Swordpoint Books.  People would apply, start work, realise that they weren’t being paid enough to put up with Mr Bridger, and quit.  Usually within two weeks, although the record was half an hour.  Only Mariam and Gavin stayed.  Mariam because there were six kids in her house, and she was pretty sure the only thing stopping both her parents from working themselves into an early grave was the fact that the oldest three earned enough to buy most of their own school supplies.  Gavin because he was just plain stuck.  She was pretty sure he didn’t even get paid.

“Dad, listen…  It was two days old, it had been in the exact same place since yesterday…”

“I didn’t ask you how old it was, Gavin.  I asked where it was.”

“Last week you got mad at me for not keeping the front desk tidy…”

“I didn’t ask you what happened last week!” Mr Bridger screamed.  Mariam could practically hear the spit spraying out all over poor Gavin’s face.  “I asked you what happened to my fucking paper!”

It was an odd thing about Mr Bridger- no matter how angry and out of-control he seemed, he always managed to save the swearwords for when he really wanted to scare you.  Anyway, Mariam couldn’t stop herself.  “I threw it out,” she called, as calm as possible while still being loud enough for Mr Bridger to hear her.

It seemed to have worked.  There was a short pause, and then the stamping footsteps started up again, coming closer and closer until Mr Bridger appeared at the end of Mariam’s aisle.  He was a man who seemed to be all reds and yellows- red cheeks, yellow teeth, red strawberry nose, yellow whites in his eyes, red bags under his eyes, yellowing shirt that Mariam suspected he’d been wearing for the last three days.  “Who the fuck told you to throw it out?”

Mariam took a deep breath.  “Like Gavin said, it was just last week you told us to keep the desk tidy…”

“You threw out my paper.”  Mr Bridger was bearing down on her now, his cheese-and-cigarettes breath wafting in her face.  “My property.”

Mariam looked up at him, not daring to move a muscle.  “Yes.”

“That’s what you do in your house, then?  Help ourselves to other people’s things?”

“We throw out newspapers when they’re two days old, yes.”  Mr Bridger was always speculating about what they did in her house.  Among her people.

Mr Bridger stared at her, still treating her to wafts of his breath, but he didn’t do anything.  And what can you do? thought Mariam, Sack me?  Not a chance.  You wouldn’t be able to scream at me anymore if you did.  Of course, if she was Gavin, he’d have already made a dark remark about discussing the matter very carefully after closing time, but she wasn’t Gavin, and that was why it was better for her to take the blame.

“Well, we’re not in your house now,” he said eventually, “I’m paying you to be here.  You owe me respect.”

Mariam said nothing.

“You agree with me, then?” he said, a little louder, “You owe me respect?”

“Yes,” said Mariam.

For a moment, she was worried he was going to make her repeat the words back to him, just to be sure, but instead he backed off and disappeared into the aisles beyond.  Mariam waited until his footsteps were a safe distance away, then went to find Gavin.

He was backed up against a row of reference books, hunched over in an attempt to make himself look smaller.  Gavin was only an inch or two shorter than his father, but at times like this, he seemed about half his size.  “You didn’t need to do that,” he murmured.

“It was that or listen to him screech at you for the next hour,” said Mariam, keeping her voice quiet enough to stay within this aisle, where Mr Bridger couldn’t catch it.

Gavin breathed in, set his mouth in a straight line, and looked away from Mariam.  He knew she was right.

Mariam and Gavin went to different schools, on different sides of town.  If it hadn’t been for Swordpoint Books, they’d never have met, so there was at least one good reason to put up with Mr Bridger.  Mariam didn’t have much patience for the boys at her school- most of them thought that drawing cartoon willies on their desks was the last word in humour- but you could have an actual conversation with Gavin.  Usually either about books or how much they hated Mr Bridger, but they were conversations, and Mariam felt better for having them.  Gavin was her friend.  And friends didn’t let friends get bollocked by their dads just for throwing away old newspapers.

They heard the door to the break room creak open, then shut. They relaxed a little.  Mr Bridger had gone off to sulk and smoke a whole packet of Silk Cut.

“He just left it out so he could pick a fight over it,” said Mariam.

“Of course,” said Gavin, “Even he doesn’t take three days to read the Sun.”

“Maybe he was just really attached to Thursday’s Page Three girl.”

Gavin made a face.

Mariam stood against the bookcase next to him.  Their eyes met, and they both let out an exaggerated, exasperated sigh.  “The working life,” said Gavin.

Mariam shrugged.  “My mum says that your first job should be as crappy as possible.  That way, for the rest of your life, you appreciate the jobs that aren’t.”

“If I even get to have another job,” grumbled Gavin, “Knowing Dad, I’ll still be working here in ten years’ time.”  He sighed.  “He’s already told me I needn’t think he’s paying for university for me.”

“So you’ll get a loan.  That’s what most people do.”  She was about to suggest that Gavin get in touch with his mother and ask her to help out with his fees, but stopped herself just in time.  The former Mrs Bridger had run off with a guy from her job eight years ago, and if she hadn’t bothered to take Gavin with her (at least for long enough to drop him off with a family member who screamed less), then it was probably too much to expect her to fork out a few thousand pounds for him now.

Gavin laughed.  “Nothing’s ever impossible for you, is it, Mariam?”

She patted him on the shoulder.  “Won’t be impossible for you, either.  You’ll see.”

They heard the front door open, and Gavin moved off towards the front desk in case the customer needed help.  But before he disappeared around the corner, he looked over his shoulder and gave Mariam a grin that made her feel warm all over.

(To Be Continued)

(WARNING- DEEPLY UNPLEASANT SUBJECT MATTER.  CAUTION ADVISED.)

August 1999

Just as they were about to start the second half, Isaac looked up at the stands and spotted Mr Forrest.  He hadn’t seen him before, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been there- the Ravens Hall pitch was on a big, open field, and the spectators’ stands were right in front of the sun.  Half the time, when you looked in that direction, all you saw was a silhouette in front of a big, yellow burst of light that made your eyeballs ache.

Mr Forrest.  Isaac hadn’t seen him in three years.  He’d been the PE teacher at Ivy Brook Primary, but then he’d left just before Isaac had gone into Year Five.  Isaac wanted to get his attention, maybe get in a little wave before the kick-off, but something made him hold back.  He had a weird, guilty feeling, like he knew Mr Forrest wouldn’t be pleased to see him.

Then the coach blew the whistle, and Isaac had other things to focus on.  The score going into the second half was one-all, so both teams were ready to risk life and limb just to get to the ball.  Isaac managed to get hold of it, at the price of getting his shins hacked to bits by the Mountfitchet boys’ boots, and passed it along to Ben Larson, who got it halfway up the field and passed it to Tommy MacLeod.

Tommy did alright at first, weaving around the Mountfitchet defenders like a pinball.  Tommy was a little bit shorter than most of the boys in the Ravens, but that just made him harder to catch.  If he’d just made it another yard or two, he could have passed it back to Isaac and everything would have been fine.  Instead, one of the Mountfitchet boys moved to tackle him, and Tommy shrank back.

For a moment, Isaac wondered if that was really what he’d seen.  Maybe the Mountfitchet boy had been a bit rough with his tackle, and Tommy had just stumbled backwards?  Maybe the Mountfitchet boy had even fouled him?  But when the coach bellowed across the field, “MacLeod, what are you doing?!?”  Isaac knew what had happened.  Tommy had seen the Mountfitchet boy coming towards him, he’d panicked and jumped back, and that mistake had cost them the ball.  Isaac saw the look of disgust on the coach’s face, and thought about Mr Forrest again.

His memory was a bit fuzzy, but Isaac was pretty sure he’d embarrassed himself in front of Mr Forrest somehow.  Not right before Mr Forrest had left, but at the end of Year Two or Year Three, so that every time Isaac had seen him for the next few years, he’d got that hot, squirmy feeling in his stomach and wanted to hide.

There had been… some kind of game?  Had it been in a PE lesson, or at an after-school club?  Isaac couldn’t remember exactly.  All he knew was that he’d been too much of a wimp to join in, and that Mr Forrest had given him exactly the same look of disgust that the coach was giving Tommy right now.

Isaac didn’t know whether to feel sorry for Tommy or to kick him in the shin.  On the one hand, he knew what it was like to be the person who screwed things up for everyone else, but on the other, he’d worked very hard to stop being that person.  He’d managed to stop being scared of stupid things (spiders, the dark… even escalators, for a while), and to join in and make friends.  For the last few years, he’d barely thought of how he used to be when he was younger.  He’d been too busy living his life.

A cheer went up from the stand.  In barely ten seconds. Mountfitchet had managed to get the ball all the way up to the pitch and into the Ravens’ goal.  Isaac cringed.  He had a feeling that Tommy was never going to live this down.

 

June 1994

Isaac had had a lot of fun finding and eating bits of popcorn people had dropped on the floor, until his mum caught him doing it and got him to stop.

“I can’t believe it,” she snapped, “I thought you were old enough to know not to eat things that have been on the ground.”

Isaac fidgeted.  Mum was right, he’d known it was a stupid idea even as he’d done it… but popcorn tasted really, really good, and he didn’t have any of his own.

Mum and Dad were at one of the metal tables on the upper half of the playground, the ones that were covered in little puddles of beer.  Further down, there were face-painting stalls, a bring and buy, and a bouncy castle, but Isaac had been to all three, and now he was bored.  And now he didn’t even have popcorn to console him.

“If I can’t trust you on your own, you’ll have to spend the rest of the evening sat with me.”  One look at the table told you what a dire threat this was.  The chairs were the metal kind that drained all the heat out of your legs and made you die of frostbite even though it was June, and the table itself was covered in beery grime, so you wouldn’t even be able to lean on it without making your elbows stink for the rest of the night.  “Is that going to have to happen?”

Isaac looked down at the ground, which was covered in popcorn that he wouldn’t get to taste.  “No.  Sorry, Mum.”

“Right!”  Mum gave a nod of satisfaction, and turned back to the table.  Isaac trudged off, doing his best to look trustworthy in case she turned round to check on him.

He wandered towards the dancefloor (really a big patch of tarmac with disco lights flashing all around it), wondering if he should wait for a song he liked and join in.  There was a little stall nearby selling drinks and snacks, but Isaac had mostly run out of money, and besides, they were only selling those weird fruit drinks in the square containers, the ones that always seemed to go down wrong and make you cough and get a sore throat.

He looked around and spotted the fortune teller’s tent.  He probably didn’t have enough money for that either.  Besides, he didn’t think he really wanted to see the future.  He didn’t like the thought of seeing himself and his friends as old people.

“Hello, Isaac,” said a voice, right in his ear.  Isaac jumped, and Mr Forrest laughed.  He was always doing stuff like that, joking around, like the time he’d told Isaac’s class that they’d be doing parachute jumps in PE, but it turned out what he meant was holding up that big red bit of cloth they kept at the back of the hall and jumping under it.  “Keeping busy?”

Isaac smiled up at him.  “Yeah.”

Mr Forrest scratched his nose.  “So I suppose you won’t have time to come out to the swimming pool with me?”

Now, that was interesting.  The swimming pool was in a little building just on the other side of the vegetable garden, and Isaac had never been inside.  “I thought you had to be in Year Six to go in the swimming pool?”

Mr Forrest slapped him on the back.  “Not tonight.  You’ll be with me, so it’s allowed.  Unless you’re too busy…”

“No!” said Isaac quickly, “I’ll come!”  He liked swimming, and he loved the thought of being the only kid in Year Two who knew what the swimming pool looked like.  He could imagine it right now- the other kids wouldn’t believe him at first, but then when they all got to Year Six and were allowed in the swimming pool, they’d look around and realise that Isaac had described it perfectly.  He’d get four years’ worth of respect, all at once.

Mr Forrest grinned.  “You sure?”

“Yeah!”

“Alright, then!”  Mr Forrest slapped him on the back again.  “Come on, I’ll get you some icecream on the way.”

(To Be Continued)

Natalie had managed to hold onto herself when she’d realised Paul wasn’t in, but she didn’t manage it this time.  Mr Miacca’s house.  It wasn’t fair.  They’d tried so hard…  If those boys hadn’t chased them off their path, they could have been at home by now.  Instead, they were in this horrible dark place where there were burns on the floor and the walls were hard enough to bruise you from an inch away.  It wasn’t fair.  It wasn’t fair.

She sat down, tears springing into her eyes.  She wanted Mum and Dad.  She even wanted Andrea.  She wanted to be at home, in her bedroom, with her toys and her books around her, where she was safe.  And she was probably never going to see any of it again.

She sat against the wall and wrapped her arms around her knees, as if she could make herself smaller and stop Mr Miacca from noticing her.  She could hear herself crying in little snuffly breaths, like a little animal in the woods just before it got eaten by a fox or an owl.  It wasn’t fair.  It wasn’t fair.

Natalie was suddenly surrounded by a sweaty, biscuity smell as Stephanie’s chubby arms went around her head and shoulders.  “It’s OK, Natalie,” she said, in that bright, comforting voice their mum and their teachers always used when somebody fell over and cut their knee.  “Don’t be scared.  They won’t find us here.”

She thought Natalie was crying because she was scared of those boys from the video shop.  She didn’t know how bad things had got.  And how was Natalie supposed to tell her?

“They were nasty boys, weren’t they?” said Steph, doing a perfect impression of their mum by now, “It’s OK.  They won’t get you.”

Natalie marvelled a bit at Stephanie.  She’d tried to stop herself from crying earlier because she didn’t want to set Steph off, but as soon as she actually started crying, she got a hug.  The same girl who’d been such a brat about her aching legs earlier had seen the person in charge crying and hadn’t worried or started crying herself.  She hadn’t thought of anything except cheering Natalie up.

And if Mr Miacca came by right now, he’d eat Steph right up, and she’d be gone forever.

That thought should have made Natalie cry harder, but instead, it set off that fire in her chest again.  How dare Mr Miacca try and eat her little sister?  How dare he do that to a little girl who wouldn’t hurt a fly and was kind to people when they cried?  And how dare he try and eat Natalie, after she’d tried so hard to get home tonight?  How dare he try and wipe that all out, just to get a meal?  He didn’t know that Natalie was good at drawing or liked watching Animaniacs or that she had a little walk-in cupboard in her room that had a picture of a guy on a motorbike at the back that she thought looked cool.  To him, she and Steph could have been anyone else in the world.  They were just here so that he could stuff his face.  How dare he?

Natalie took a couple of deep breaths, and wiped her eyes.  “Thanks, Steph.  I’m feeling better now.”  Stephanie moved her arms, and Natalie stood up and took her hand.  “Come on, let’s find a way out.”

They walked along dark hallways, some with holes instead of windows and some without even that, with cracked cement blocks in the ceilings and rusty metal panels bolted onto the walls.  Every so often, there were loose stones and bits of brick on the floor, and Natalie crouched down to pick them up and hide them in her tunic.  She thought about the little boy in the “Mr Miacca” story, who’d tricked Mr Miacca and his wife into letting him go, but she also thought about Jack, who’d cut down the beanstalk while the giant was still on it so he fell down and smashed his head open, and about Mollie Whuppie, who’d tricked her giant into killing his own daughters instead of her and her sisters and then got him to chase her over a sword and chop himself in half.  And the more stones she gathered, the more she thought of one of the Bible stories they’d learned about in Girl’s Brigade.  The one about David and Goliath.

The story hadn’t said whether Mr Miacca was a giant or a normal person who everyone knew ate children.  But either way, she knew she could beat him.

They moved through the dark hallways, breathing in the stony, sooty smell, and Natalie wondered when they might run into Mr Miacca.  She’d imagined his house as looking like a bigger version of a normal house, but this black, creepy labyrinth wasn’t too much of a surprise.  Obviously he’d want you to get lost if you tried to escape.  Obviously he’d want you to be frightened along the way, so that by the time he found you you’d be too scared and confused to fight back properly.  Well, too bad for him, because Natalie had a tunic full of stones.  She was ready for him.

They started to hear voices at around the same time as they saw the light up ahead.  They wouldn’t have gone towards the light if they could have helped it, but there wasn’t anywhere to turn off, and the last thing they wanted to do was go back into the dark.  Still, Natalie slowed down, clutching Steph’s hand in hers, and veered closer to the wall as she listened out for the words in the voices.  Men’s voices, and angry, by the sound of it.

“Hey, hang on, Dave…  Found it?”

“No…  I think they keep it over on the…”

Natalie and Steph inched forward.  Up ahead, the hallway ended, and there was a big room full of glowing light.  A tiny smudged window above a big glowing gap instead of a door.  And Natalie couldn’t see anything through it.  The light was so bright, she had to squint.

Mr Miacca’s kitchen?  Maybe.  But he didn’t know she had these stones.

The voices continued.  “…night watchman?”

“Nah, he’s over on…”

“How do we get it back to…?”

Those voices didn’t sound like she imagined Mr Miacca’s would be.  They were looking for something, and they were worried about the night watchman.  And that might mean…

They were almost in the big room now.  Natalie’s eyes had got used to the light, so she could look through the doorway and see what was in there.  It looked like a barn, like the one they went through when they visited Marsh Farm and saw the cows and pigs in their pens.  The same big, triangular ceiling over the big, empty space.  But the barn at Marsh Farm was a warm, dark place that smelled of hay and manure and animals.  This room was clean, cold, and full of light.

It looked like a barn, but it smelled like pencil shavings.  It didn’t make much sense, but not much had today.

They walked in and took a look around.  At one end of the room was a row of small buildings, like four tiny, one-room Wendy houses made out of brick.  Just to make it even weirder, they had blue stripes running down them, like pin-stripes on a suit, in the exact same kind of blue they used for the pens at Natalie’s school.  Natalie didn’t know what Mr Miacca used those buildings for, and she didn’t want to know.  The thing she cared about was on the wall just to the left.  A grey, metal sign saying EXIT, with an arrow pointing to a nearby doorway.

What if it’s a trick? thought Natalie, It’s got to be.  Why would he have an exit sign in his own house?  He already knows where…

A heavy, metallic ringing ripped through the air.  Steph put her hands up to her ears and cried out.

An alarm, thought Natalie, We tripped it somehow, and he knows we’re here, and he’s going to come right for us.  The exit sign might have been a trick, but Natalie only had a split-second to act and it was the only option she had.  She grabbed Steph’s hand and followed where the arrow pointed.

It took them into another dark tunnel, but Natalie was too busy running to care.  Besides, this time was different.  The air was cooler, and there was something up ahead.  A light?  Or was she just imagining it?

She wasn’t.  It got bigger as she ran.  The air grew fresher and fresher, and she knew this hallway led outside.  And the fence had gaps that they could get through, she knew that.  If they could just…

Footsteps.  Running behind them.  Chasing them.

If Natalie had stopped to think about it, she might have tried to work out how fast their pursuer was running and whether they could get away in time.  But she didn’t.  Instead, she stopped in her tracks, turned around, and took one of those stones out of her tunic.

A man came out of the shadows.  Natalie aimed the stone as accurately as she could, and threw it.

The man dropped whatever he was carrying (something heavy and metal, from the sound it made when it hit the ground), and grabbed his face with his hands.  It was hard to tell with the alarm going off, but Natalie was pretty sure he’d yelled out the F-word, the one those boys at the video shop had been so keen on.

He didn’t look much like Natalie had imagined Mr Miacca.  He was wearing scruffy jeans and a jacket that said “Adidas” on it, and he definitely wasn’t a giant- he was probably shorter and thinner than Natalie and Steph’s dad.  But that didn’t mean he wasn’t Mr Miacca.  The story hadn’t said he was a giant, had it?

Before he had a chance to look up and see them, Natalie threw another stone, hitting him on the forehead and driving him backwards, a few steps further into the dark.  Natalie turned round and ran ahead.

She and Steph burst through the opening (not a door, an opening, same as the windows earlier), going so fast that Natalie expected the soles of her shoes to catch fire, and took a sharp left so as to throw off the man from the tunnel when he came out after them.  Maybe he was Mr Miacca and maybe he wasn’t, but Natalie was pretty sure he was someone dangerous.  If he caught them, she didn’t know what he’d do.  Better just to run.

There was a barrier that was meant to keep cars out, but Natalie and Steph ducked under it and soon they were back on the pavement.  They weren’t in the same place they’d come in, which was good, because that meant those boys weren’t going to be waiting for them around the next corner.  But there was something even better.  Natalie knew where she was.  And she knew what she’d find if she went right at the zebra crossing and round the next corner.

In the story, Mr Miacca had captured the boy as soon as he’d got beyond the corner of the road where he lived.  Natalie didn’t completely let down her guard when she got to the corner of the road where she lived (the furthest she was allowed to ride her bike on her own), but she felt something in her loosen up.  As if she’d had a fist clenched inside her chest, and it was starting to relax a bit.

They strolled up to their front gate.  Natalie held it open and let Stephanie walk up to the door first, then locked it carefully behind her.  Stephanie pulled on the doorknob for a moment or two, then looked up at her sister expectantly.

“We can’t go in yet,” Natalie told her, “We don’t have the key.  We’ll have to wait for Mum or Andrea to come back.”  She wasn’t too worried about that- they’d be safe in their own front garden, even if it was getting dark.  If anything bad happened, they’d just ring next door’s doorbell and ask to stay in their kitchen for a bit.  But Natalie didn’t think it would.  “They won’t be long.”

Stephanie sat down on the doorstep, and Natalie joined her.  “Do you want me to tell you a story?” she asked.  There were a few in her head at the moment.

Steph nodded.

“OK.  Once upon a time, there was a boy who lived with his mother, and one day she told him to take their cow to market and sell it…”  As Natalie told the story, she leaned back against the door and looked out at their street.  She knew every brick of every house, every branch of every tree, every person.  It was safe.  But sometimes you had to go out beyond the corner, into Mr Miacca’s territory, and when you did, you needed to know what to do.

If she ever met Mr Miacca again, she’d be ready for him.

Natalie put her arm around Steph, and looked out into the street, feeling all the fear and anger of the evening drain out of her.  She was barely halfway through the story when she saw her mother’s car come around the corner.

The End