‘Neither is she,’ said Birthday, pointing his chin at Samantha.
‘Would you two cut it out?’ said Samantha.
Suddenly, she reached into the grass for her sandals. ‘Don’t look now, boys and girls,’ she said. ‘Birthday, isn’t that your new bestie on his way over here with some friends for us to play with?’
She scrambled to her feet, sandals in hand. Birthday Jones snapped his head around. Running full-pelt from the market into the park, the blond giant and his Nordic clones were going to crash their party in seconds.
‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ he said, leaping to his feet.
Mirela and Samantha sprinted after him.
The park led into a laneway and then a side street wide enough only for foot traffic. Birthday Jones ducked past a display stand on the sidewalk, but Mirela collected it, and brochures and magazines flew like birds into Samantha’s face. Her feet became entangled in the wire frame and she was suddenly airborne. But not for long. She crashed down into the gutter, palms first, chin next. She bit her tongue and tasted blood.
‘Ouch,’ she said miserably to Birthday, who was already standing over her, hands reaching down. She got the dimples.
‘Come on!’ yelled Mirela.
The shopkeeper raced out of his store pelting stale bread rolls and screaming like a steam train. While Birthday pulled Samantha to her feet, Mirela picked the rolls up from the laneway and, laughing, pegged them back at the enraged store owner.
Shouts from behind them sounded much too close. Samantha’s head pounded and her hands were on fire.
‘Seriously, Birthday,’ Mirela yelled as they began running again. ‘Why’d ya have to pick jocks as your marks? Couldn’t you have targeted a little old lady?’
‘That’s hardly fair, is it?’ he said. ‘This way.’
Skidding into the next street, Birthday abruptly jerked around a corner and into an enclave. ‘Up here,’ he shouted, running through a darkened doorway opening onto a set of concrete stairs.
‘Eww,’ said Mirela, halting at the foot of the stairs, her nose wrinkled. ‘It smells like somebody pissed in here.’
‘That’s because people do,’ Birthday called down to her. ‘A lot.’
He took the stairs two at a time, Mirela right behind him. Samantha managed them one by one, limping now, a hand on the rail for support. Birthday Jones disappeared into a room at the top and Mirela again paused at the threshold, hands on hips, sucking air.
‘Come on, Sam,’ she called down. ‘I’m not going in there without you.’
‘Hold up,’ Sam managed. Drums played at the back of her head and it felt like her jaw wouldn’t close properly.
‘You don’t look so good,’ said Mirela when she cleared the last step.
Samantha gave her a look. She wanted to say,
‘Well, you’re not gonna like it in there,’ said Mirela. ‘On account of how it stinks much worse than the stairs.’
Samantha could smell it already: solvent and fuel oil. Oh God. ‘Is this a -’ she began.
Mirela stepped aside. ‘Yep,’ she said. ‘A squat.’
The room was even darker than the stairwell and at first Samantha could only make out formless shapes a few shades darker than the general gloom. She felt despair, sorrow and emptiness wash over her before her eyes adjusted to reveal maybe six or seven kids. Some sat around, others were flat on their backs, and at least four of them held paper bags over their mouths, heaving in and out, as though the bags were external lungs. They were breathing in glue or petrol: the cheapest drugs in Romania. Grief clutched at her throat.
‘Over here.’
She could hear Birthday calling them, but it took another couple of seconds to spot him by a wall. She grabbed for Mirela’s hand and they crossed the room, stepping over mounds of clothing, discarded food containers, and a boy who had passed out with vomit on his chin.
When they reached Birthday, she realised that he stood next to a row of newspaper-covered windows.
‘You all right?’ he said.
Samantha held her hands out, the wounds red raw and weeping.
‘Poor baby superstar,’ he said, touching a finger, feather-light, to her bottom lip. She felt it still swelling.
‘Anyway, check it,’ he said. He turned and lifted a corner of one of the newspapers and a shaft of sunlight streamed in. Dust motes held a dance party in the glow from the window.
Samantha peered through the chink in the paper. She blinked in the daylight from the street. Tourists shopped and ate, Birthday’s crew begged and stole, and in the middle of them, flushed and furious, the Nordic jocks scanned the sidewalks, searching everywhere for them. She stepped aside to let Mirela have a look.
‘This place is charming, by the way,’ Mirela said quietly, as she elbowed past Birthday to reach the window. She peered through. ‘They’re gonna get themselves whiplash, looking around like that,’ she said.
She and Birthday laughed. Samantha smiled.
‘Ouch,’ she said, holding her jaw. ‘I hate you both.’
Samantha wanted to go home. She wanted to wash her hands and face and lie down. She also wanted to have a long talk with Lala – she didn’t know what was going on with the gypsy king, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t over. Most of all, she wanted to get Mirela out of here. Esmeralda would have a stroke if she knew her daughter was in a squat.
A dark-skinned, wiry boy, maybe a regular-sized nineyear-old, or a wizened eleven, moved from the shadows to join them at the window. Samantha didn’t recognise him and she hadn’t spotted him in the room before. She suddenly wondered how many other people were actually in here. The boy wore a man-sized black T-shirt and cut- off pants that didn’t reach his knobbly knees; he carried a paper bag in his hand.
‘What are you doing here, B?’ the boy said to Birthday Jones.
‘Hey, Fonso,’ said Birthday, giving the boy the super-fast, complicated handshake of the streets. ‘We’re just staying out of someone’s way. You?’ Birthday looked down pointedly at the paper bag.
‘Oh well, you know. This and that,’ said the boy.
‘Yeah, I can see. It looks like mostly
Birthday moved fast, but the kid was quicker. ‘Hey, B. Don’t go all parental on me, dude,’ he said, now safely an arm’s length from Birthday Jones. He reminded Samantha of the cats who mooched around the campsite every night. They purred and pranced for food, but come almost-just within touching distance and they were suddenly ten feet away again.
‘What do you do that crap for, anyway?’ said Birthday. ‘You don’t need it, man.’
The kid raised the bag to his face, inhaled and exhaled. ‘Maybe you don’t need it, but maybe you got less than me to forget about every day, you know?’ Fonso raised his bag again. ‘This here’s good for the memory, man. Makes it all go away.’
For the first time he looked over at Samantha and Mirela. ‘I see you got the Gaje Princess with you,’ he said. ‘I guess you got away from them ninja freaks, then?’
‘From who now?’ said Birthday.
Samantha’s heart ratcheted up another notch or two.
Fonso breathed into his bag again. His eyes were a glass doll’s. When he wasn’t speaking or breathing into the bag, his bottom jaw dropped open, as though he’d forgotten how to close his mouth. Samantha could barely feel him – he was far, far away. But how did he know who she was?
‘It’s just that this here’s prolly not a good place to hide from them,’ said Fonso. ‘On account of how they’ve already been here twice today that I know of.’
Birthday Jones whipped his eyes around the room.
To Samantha everything seemed the same as when they’d first entered. But suddenly Birthday reached up and tore a thick wad of newspaper from the closest window.
