that he hadn’t washed since God knows when – apart from a dunk in a river thick with mud – had increased the strength of his normal staleness to Olympic proportions.
“What do you think? Cool, isn’t it? All we need to do is pull a bale across the entrance behind us and we’re sitting pretty. Shall I go and do it now, see how easy it is?”
The thought of being sealed in there with him was too much. I lurched toward the tunnel again. “No, it’s alright. We can do that later, if we need to.” Emerging back into the barn, I breathed in deeply. Even the stench of the cow shit was better than Spider’s rankness.
Spider crawled out of the tunnel, looking like a dog with two dicks. I didn’t mean to burst his bubble, but my hand was hurting, and I was tired and scared. I suppose I just said what was in my head, without stopping to think about it first.
“Spider, if they do find us here, we’re stuffed, aren’t we?”
His face changed instantly, like someone had switched off the light. And I hated myself for doing that to him.
“Yeah, Jem. If they find us here, we’re cornered. We’ll be like rats in a barrel.” He got to his feet and came and sat on a bale next to me. He leaned forward, resting his arms on his thighs, head down. His voice was low, intense. “I won’t go quietly, Jem. I’ll fight them, Jem. I will.” I knew he had a knife with him. The way he was talking now, I was pretty sure he’d use it.
I could feel anxiety shooting through my veins. “It’s not worth it, Spider. If they really corner us, we should give up. What have they got on us, after all? We didn’t do nothing at the Eye. They can’t pin that on us. You’ve nicked some money, but I doubt anyone’s reported that. We nicked a couple of cars. Big deal. If you start fighting – cut one of them – that’s different. They’ll throw the book at you.”
“Jem, whatever happens, they’ll lock me up. You might be OK – you didn’t nick the cars, did you? There’s that knife thing at school, but a little white girl like you, Karen and Social Services on your side, no priors, they’ll go easy on you. But they’ll take one look at me – think about it. I check all the boxes, typical juvenile offender. They won’t think twice, just chuck me inside for a few months, a year. Lost in the system.” He rubbed his hands through his hair. “I can’t do it, Jem. I don’t wanna be locked up. I don’t wanna be just another kid they’ve thrown away.” He smashed his hand down into the straw next to him. I’d heard him go off on tirades before, knew he could work himself up into a temper, but when I looked at him, his face was all squeezed tight like he was going to cry. He was angry, yeah, but he was scared, too. “I won’t do it, Jem. I’d rather fight and die.”
“Don’t say that, mate. Don’t ever say that.” And all the time I was thinking,
He sniffed hard, wiped his sleeve across his nose. Then he sat up and looked straight at me. “Is it today, Jem?”
I stared blankly at him, pretending I didn’t know what he was asking. “What?”
“Is today when it all ends for me? You know, don’t you? Are they going to find us? Are they going to put a bullet in me like they did to that guy on the Tube?”
I felt tears stinging my eyes. “Don’t ask me, Spider. You know I can’t tell you.”
“Oh, Christ,” he whispered. He put both hands up to his mouth, like he was praying. He was breathing hard, eyes flicking left and right, panic in them as clear as day. It crucified me to see him like that. I couldn’t let it go on, so I broke my rule.
“It’s not today,” I said quietly. “Spider, are you listening? It’s not today.”
He dropped his hands down and looked at me. His eyes were red-rimmed.
“Thank you,” he said, and he nodded. “I shouldn’t have asked, and I won’t ever ask you again. I promise.” He looked like a little boy, so serious and solemn.
I wanted to put my arms around him and tell him everything was going to be OK. I suddenly thought of Val, the woman who had comforted him like that when he was little, and the words she’d said to me – was it only two days ago? – came ringing back into my head.
Perched on some hay bales, we ate the rest of our stuff. I turned my back on the cows so they wouldn’t put me off eating. We shared the last bag of chips, and had a chocolate bar each, and a last swig of Coke. We ate slowly, trying to make a meal out of hardly anything. As we swallowed the last mouthfuls, we both knew. That was it. All gone. We were running out of options now. We’d have to take some action tomorrow. We had no alternative.
Once we’d eaten, there was nothing to do again. We talked a bit, but there wasn’t much to say. We both knew we were in trouble, both felt ground down by it. After a while, we crawled into Spider’s hay cave, spread out our blankets, and curled up a little way apart from each other.
It was dark now, really dark, but probably only about five o’clock. We lay there, talking a bit, listening to the cows. If you tried not to think about how revolting they were, how big, it was actually quite a mellow sound; you could hear them blowing air through their big hairy nostrils, moving around in the hay, munching away all the time. Every time one of them farted, Spider hooted with laughter. Easily pleased, some people.
I don’t know how long we lay there. I couldn’t get comfortable. The bales were quite hard underneath, and the spikes of hay were scratchy, even through the blanket. My skin, with two days’ grime, was itching like mad, and so was my scalp. I felt sticky, horrible.
“I could do with a bath, or even a shower,” I said, wriggling where I lay, trying to scratch my back against the hay underneath.
“Doesn’t bother me,” said Spider.
“Obviously,” I said.
“What do you mean?” he said.
“You stink, Spider. No offense, mate, but you do. And I stink, too, now, and I don’t wanna.”
While we’d been talking, a noise had been building up in the background. Now, in a pause, I could hear drumming on the tin roof. It was raining. The noise was incredible, water battering down on metal. I wriggled out of the tunnel and sat on a hay bale, pulling my top over my head and unbuttoning my jeans.
“What you doing?!” Spider had emerged behind me.
My jeans got stuck on my sneakers. I yanked at the laces.
“I’m going to get clean. Come on, come outside.” Down to my bra and undies. Bare feet.
I ran outside. It was lashing down. I could feel mud and crap splashing up my legs as great drops hit the ground. I didn’t care. It felt fantastic. Fresh, icy pinpricks hitting my defenseless skin. I tipped my face up toward the sky, rubbed my hands over it and over my scalp, through the bristles of hair. The itchiness was going away. I smoothed the rain into my skin, all over, then stood, faceup again, mouth open, catching raindrops on my tongue.
I looked across to the shed. In the gloom I could see Spider leaning against one of the metal legs, smiling and shaking his head.
“You’ve lost it, man!” he shouted. “You’ve really lost it.”
“No,” I bellowed back. “It’s great! Come on out here!”
“Na-ah. Not me, man. I got wet enough yesterday.”
I ran over to him, laughing as my feet slipped in some mud and I almost went over. He backed away, but I grabbed his arm, then held both his hands and pulled him outside. Once he started to get wet, he gave in, started stripping off and throwing his clothes back into the barn. “I can’t believe we’re doing this. It’s mad!”
I ran back out, twirling around with my arms outstretched, losing myself in the dark and the rain. Down to his briefs, Spider picked his way out to me gingerly, curved over, stomach sucked in, his body trying to defend itself against the cold. He was so skinny. You could see his muscles, not because he was buff, just because there was no fat hiding them. He stood there with his arms across his body. He wouldn’t look me in the eye. I was past shyness, carried away with the exhilaration, but he stood there, paralyzed with self-consciousness.
“It’s freakin’ freezing!” he squealed. I laughed.
“It’s refreshing!”
“It feels like needles!”
“Rub it in. Rub the water in, it’s fine.”
He rubbed one arm, stiffly, then moved up to his shoulder. “Oh, yeah, you’re right.” He started to get into it, running his hands over his hair, turning his face up like me, closing his eyes. He let out a whoop of joy, and I
