ceaselessly, trying to find an entry point for a body blow.
Suddenly Abrafo stopped. His eyes still locked on Luke’s, he shot out an arm just as Zac moved in again to strike. Abrafo’s forearm smacked into Zac’s neck and the smaller boy dropped.
Luke knew he had to do something. Now. But he couldn’t move. He opened his mouth to shout out. And then, from the corner of his eye, Luke saw Zac fly again. In slow motion this time. From the floor at Abrafo’s feet, Zac sprang upwards, his sneakers suddenly head-height. His legs scissored, midair, and one heel cracked into the albino’s forehead.
The blue eyes closed and Luke vomited all over his shoes.
‘Move, Luke, now!’ yelled Zac.
Still bent double, stomach convulsing, Luke recognised the panic in Zac’s voice and threw himself sideways. He’d learned long ago that if someone warned him to move, he moved. Fast. He registered a blur of movement flashing past the spot where he’d been standing, just as his ribs cracked into the side of the desk.
‘Oh my God! What on earth is going on here?’ Matron stood in the doorway, her radio in hand.
‘Code Nine Administration building,’ she yelled into the radio. ‘Officer down! Inmate at large. Black, Nguyen, on your knees. Now!’
Luke was happy to oblige. He allowed himself to slide down the legs of the desk. He sat back on his haunches and bent his head forward over his lap. The stench from his shoes filled his nostrils and he lurched upright again.
‘You stink, Black,’ said Zac, kneeling next to him.
‘Kill me now,’ said Luke.
‘I don’t think you’ll have to wait long to die, dude,’ said Zac. ‘Holt should be here any minute.’
Pantelimon, Bucharest, Romania
Mirela blew a kiss to the middle-aged woman who was red-faced and screaming at them from the driver’s seat of her dilapidated Volvo station wagon. In the rear of the car, two children in school uniform pulled faces, their middle fingers raised.
Samantha tugged at Mirela’s bare brown arm.
‘Maybe if you didn’t just dawdle across the road, Mimi,’ she said, using Mirela’s baby name, ‘people wouldn’t be so mean to you.’
‘What are you,
‘Not all of them are like that,’ said Samantha.
‘Yeah, right,’ said Mirela. ‘That’s your opinion, but don’t forget – you believe in fairytales.’
They strolled up the main street of Pantelimon, peering into shop windows. Samantha smiled for two red- haired, sunburned tourists falling over one another to take their photo. Right when they sing-songed, ‘Cheeeese!’ Mirela poked out her tongue.
‘What?’ she said, when Samantha frowned at her. ‘You don’t think that’s gonna make a great photo? They’ll be back home one day, maybe ten years from now, looking at that photo of the two colourful gypsy girls. Of course, they’ll be stunned by the beauty of the dark-haired one sticking out her tongue. And then off they’ll go and pay to watch me star in a movie at their local cinema, and they’ll never know that they once almost met the most famous movie star in the world.’
Samantha laughed and linked arms with her.
‘You should be a writer, not a movie star,’ she said. ‘You spin enough bull-’
‘Hey!’ laughed Mirela. ‘Do you eat with that mouth?’
They walked past McDonald’s, and Mirela gazed in wistfully. ‘You wanna go in?’ she said.
‘You got any money?’ said Samantha. ‘No, you don’t, so I don’t want to go in.’
‘We’ve got
‘Oh yeah, sure. We’re gonna use the cash your mother gave us for groceries to buy McDonald’s. That sounds like a great plan. Especially if we want to be
Just ahead, Samantha spotted the two happy photographers at a stall selling overpriced junk for tourists. She watched them examining a coffee mug bearing a blurry transfer of Count Vlad Dracul, the Impaler.
‘They can’t ever get enough of Dracula, can they?’ said Mirela.
‘Well, they are in Romania, his birthplace,’ said Samantha. ‘But they should wait until they get to Transylvania for their souvenirs. They can buy underwear with his name on it then.’
‘You talk about him like he’s real.’
‘Well, not everything that exists is visible, you know.’
‘Yeah, yeah. I know. Once upon a time…’ Mirela laughed.
‘Shut up,’ said Sam. ‘Where do you reckon they’re from, anyway?’ This was her favourite game.
‘Oh, who cares,’ said Mirela. ‘Texas? Sweden?’
‘Australia?’
‘Yeah, whatever.’
‘I’d love to go to Australia,’ said Samantha.
‘Really? Gee, you’ve never mentioned
‘Meh,’ said Samantha.
‘Whatever,’ said Mirela. ‘So, where are we going, anyway?’
‘Now, where do you think?’
‘Aw, man,’ Mirela groaned. ‘Birthday Jones again? I thought you were in love with Tamas.’
‘You’re an idiot, you know that, Mimi?’
Samantha couldn’t explain why she was drawn to Birthday Jones. It would be like having to provide reasons why she loved Lala. Or Mirela, for that matter. Some people just meant the world to her.
Although Milosh’s camp travelled widely throughout Romania, they settled every year in the countryside on the outskirts of Pantelimon. And that’s where she’d met Birthday Jones. Five years ago, on the streets, where he lived.
‘But he’s not even Roma,’ said Mirela.
Samantha sighed. The fence between the Roma and the Gaje was as carefully tended by the gypsies as it was by the rest of the Romanian population. She found the whole thing completely boring. As far as she was concerned, she couldn’t have cared less about a person’s nationality or culture. It made no more difference to her than whether a person preferred Coke or Pepsi. For the past two years, every summer, she’d been using the internet at the Pantelimon library and she knew that the world was a much bigger place than Romania.
‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘You got anything better to do?’
They found Birthday working his favourite restaurant strip.
‘He is gorgeous,’ said Mirela. ‘I do understand the attraction.’
‘No attraction,’ said Samantha. ‘None. Zero. Zip.’
‘You must have it bad for Tamas, then,’ said Mirela. ‘That boy there is fine.’
They watched Birthday Jones and his crew at work. They relied on the younger beggars to get the ball rolling. When they’d first met Birthday, he’d been eleven and the absolute best beggar. Samantha suspected it was racism at play. Because Birthday Jones was a Romanian street kid with a thick mop of shaggy, light-brown hair, rather than coarse, wiry black, he stood out from the crowd. He appealed to the Western mums and dads with kids at home being babysat by Nanna while they took their trip of a lifetime. The guilt would bite hard and their wallets would be
