What Came Before He Shot Her

ain’t s’posed to . . .”

            And then in a clear correction of course, “You take it far ’nough. You got dat?”

            Neal shook him off, and in doing so, he also shook off this apparent incursion into his rank as head of the crew. This left Joel on the ground, bleeding from a cut near his left eye and gasping for breath.

Hibah had crumpled onto the bench, where she rocked herself in shock and dismay. She shook her head at this Neal whom she had never seen and did not know, her fist to her mouth.

            Toby had come running from the skate bowl. He’d brought his lava lamp along with him for the outing, and he trailed its flex over the grass. He’d begun to cry. Joel heaved himself to his knees in an attempt to reassure him.

            He muttered, “S’all right, Tobe. S’all right, mon.”

            Toby stumbled to him. “He bunged you up,” he cried. “You got cut on your face. He wanted to —”

            “S’okay.” Joel staggered to his feet. For a moment Meanwhile Gardens whirled round him like images seen from a merry-go-round. When the dizziness passed, he pressed his arm to his face. It came away bloody. He looked at Neal.

            Neal was breathing hard from his exertions, but he no longer looked as if he wanted to leap upon Joel. Instead, he made a move in Hibah’s direction. She jumped to her feet.

            “You,” she said to him.

            He said, “Listen.” He looked at his crew. Two of them shook their heads. He said urgently, “We talk, Hibah.”

            To which she responded, “I die before I talk to you again.”

            “You don’t unnerstan how t’ings goin down.”

            “I unnerstan all I need, Neal Wyatt.”

            She swept off, leaving Neal and everyone else watching her. Joel said nothing, but he didn’t need to. Neal took his presence as both cause and blame, and he jerked his head with a look that went from Joel to his brother.

            He said, “You fucked. You and weirdshit. You got dat?”

            Joel said, “I ain’t—”

            “You fucked, yellow skin. Both of you. Next time.”

            He tilted his chin in the direction of the towpath. His companion took it as it was meant and led the way so that Neal and he could rejoin the rest of the crew.

            NESS ENJOYED THE absence of Dix initially. But the long-term delight that she thought she would feel with him gone did not materialise. She liked not having to listen nightly to her aunt’s bed thumping and she liked the fact that the ground seemed more or less even between herself and Kendra once Dix was gone. Beyond that, though, there was no permanent joy for her in Dix’s removal. She hated him for his rejection of her, yet she still wanted the chance to prove she was dozens of times the woman her aunt could ever be.           Having the opportunity to move into Kendra’s bedroom to share her aunt’s bed and thus achieve a modicum of privacy in the household did not appeal to her, nor did it give her a sense of pleasure or power. Kendra made the offer, but Ness refused it. She couldn’t imagine sleeping in the same bed that Dix D’Court had so recently vacated and, even if that hadn’t been the case, sleeping in Kendra’s room with Kendra there was hardly going to give Ness the sort of privacy she preferred. She knew she didn’t belong in her aunt’s bedroom; she knew—although she never would have admitted it to anyone—that Dix did. She also knew her aunt didn’t really want her there.

            The outcome of all this was that she felt bad when she wanted to feel good. She needed a way back to the good again, and she felt fairly certain of what would work.

She chose Kensington High Street this time. She went by bus and disembarked not far from St. Mary Abbots Church. From there, she sauntered down the slope to the flower stall in front of the churchyard. She surveyed her options from this vantage point, while behind her, tuberoses, lilies, ferns, and babies’ breath were fashioned into fine bouquets.

She decided first on H & M, where the crowded conditions and the racks of garments from the subcontinent promised her the camouflage of other adolescents as well as excellent pickings. She wandered from one floor to the next, seeking something that would challenge her as well as delight her, but she could find nothing that she did not deem b-o-r-i-n-g when she evaluated it. So she meandered up the street to Accessorize, where the challenge to pocket something was much greater since the shop was so small and her photograph was still Sellotaped next to the till as someone who wasn’t allowed inside. But conditions were crowded and she gained entry, only to discover that, on this day, the merchandise wasn’t signifi cant enough to provide her with the pleasure she wanted to feel upon successfully stealing it.

After trying Top Shop and Monsoon, she finally walked into a large department store, and this was the location she settled upon. A wiser girl with malefaction on her mind might have chosen otherwise, for there were no big crowds in which to hide and as a mixed-race adolescent in revealing clothes and big hair, Ness stood out like a sunfl ower in a strawberry patch. But the merchandise looked higher class, and she liked that. She quickly spied a sequinned headband that she coveted.

            This headband was in a serendipitous location, as far as Ness was concerned. On a rack just a half dozen steps from the exit, it fairly announced its desire to be pocketed. Checking it out and deciding it was worthy of her efforts, Ness made a recce of the immediate area to make sure she was—if not safe from notice—then close enough to the doorway to dash out of the store once the headband was in her pocket.

            There didn’t seem to be anyone watching her. There didn’t seem to be anyone of note nearby at all. There was  an old pensioner giving her the eye from a rack of socks, but she could tell from his expression that the fact he was watching her had nothing at all  to do with making sure she didn’t walk off with something she hadn’t paid for and everything to do with the decolletage supplied by her choice of T-shirt. She dismissed him with contempt.

In anticipation of pinching the desired item, Ness felt the nervous energy begin to tingle up her arms. It promised her that the rush of delight she wanted was already on its way. All she had to do was reach out, take two headbands from the rack, drop them to the floor, bend, pick them up, and return only one of them as the other was safely tucked into her bag. It was easy, simple, quick, and sure. It was sweets from an infant, food from a kitten, tripping a blind man, whatever you will.

            With the sequinned band in her possession, she made for the door. She walked as casually as she’d done when she’d first entered the store, and she felt suffused with a combination of warmth and excitement as she mixed with a group of shoppers outside.

            She didn’t get far. Lit with success, she’d decided on Tower Records next, and she was about to cross the road when she was blocked by the pensioner she’d seen inside the department store. He said, “I don’t think so, dearie,” as he took her by the arm.

            She said, “What the hell you think you’re doing, mon?”

            “Nothing at all, as long as you can provide a receipt for the merchandise you’ve got inside that bag of yours. Come with me.”

            He was far stronger than he appeared. In fact, upon a closer look at him, Ness saw that he wasn’t a pensioner at all. He wasn’t stooped, as he’d appeared to be in the store, and his face wasn’t lined to match his thin, grey hair. Still, she didn’t realise how he fit into the scheme of things, and she continued to protest—loudly—as he led her back towards the door of the department store.

Once inside, he marched her along an aisle and towards the back of the store. There, a swing door led to the bowels of the building. Soon enough she was through it and being ushered down a flight of stairs.

Hotly, she said, “Where the fuck  do you think you’re takin me?”

            His answer was, “Where I take all shoplifters, dearie.”

            Thus she understood that the man she’d thought was a pensioner was a security guard for the infernal department store. So she didn’t willingly go a step farther. She put up as much of a fight as his grip upon her arm would allow. For she knew that she’d just caused herself a fair amount of trouble. Already on probation, already doing community service, she had no wish to put in another appearance in front of a magistrate, where she’d be risking more this time than merely having to show up at the child drop-in centre.

            Once down the stairs, she found herself in a narrow lino-floored corridor, where she could see that