Dad came back and said that Wills was nowhere to be seen. I could feel the anxiety mounting, even though it still wasn’t very late.
“That boy will be the death of me,” Dad said.
Mom burst into tears and then got angry with herself for being silly. I couldn’t stand just sitting there any longer, even though there was a big game starting soon on the television. I jumped up and said that I was going out on my bike to have a look for him. I left Dad trying to comfort Mom, but he wasn’t very good at it any more.
Chapter Eighteen
It felt good to be out on my bike, whistling along the road down to the canal, away from the tension at home, away from the tension of the day. I wanted the wind to sweep up all the bad things into an enormous gigantic sack, and hurl it into space. In it would be me being bad at basketball, the tournament, Mom being angry with Dad, Dad being angry with Mom, Mom and Dad not being together, Wills’s horrible friends, the money under Wills’s mattress, the knife wherever it was, Wills finding my story, and Will’s Acts Dumb and Dumber.
I was sure I would find Wills with his friends. If I found him, I was going to bicycle up to him, tell him Mom and Dad were worried about him, then cycle away again as quickly as possible before his friends could say or do anything horrible. If I found him, at least I would be able to go home and tell Mom and Dad that he was all right. Then they could stop worrying, Dad would be able to go back to his own home, and Mom and I could sit down and watch the television together like we normally did when Wills was out.
I couldn’t find Wills though. I searched all of his usual haunts twice over, in case he was on the move from one to the other. I was about to give up and go home, when I remembered the scrap yard, and the time when I thought I had seen him coming out of the scrap merchant’s building. It was worth a try.
I bicycled there as fast as I could, because it was beginning to get dark. The scrap yard was empty, probably because of the game on the television and because it was nearly dinnertime for most people. It wasn’t the sort of place I wanted to be on my own. In the gloom, the scrap merchant’s building looked spooky and unwelcoming. The danger signs with their white backgrounds shouted their message out louder than ever. I couldn’t believe anyone would want to go inside, even on the brightest, sunniest day. I laid my bike down on the ground and walked slowly over, ready to turn around and run if Wills’s friends suddenly appeared. I stood outside the building and listened. I couldn’t hear anything, and it didn’t look possible to get in through the heavily barricaded doors. Perhaps I had been wrong about Wills and his friends coming from inside the building. Perhaps they had just been walking by.
I went around to the back. There was another set of doors, padlocked and with large planks of wood across them. I reached through the planks and rattled the doors halfheartedly, knowing already that they would not give way. I felt defeated and relieved at the same time.
I turned to go home, when I noticed a small door to the right, set back into the brickwork and fastened with a padlock and a crisscross of narrow slats of wood. Some of these were broken lower down, leaving a gap large enough for a person to crawl through, if they were stupid enough to want to. And then I noticed that the padlock was not locking anything together. It was hanging from a hook, but behind it the door was slightly ajar. I put my hand through the slats and pushed the door gently. It squeaked on its hinges and the bottom dragged on the ground, but it gave way a little. I listened for any sounds from inside. Nothing.
DANGER! the signs warned me. I was sure there was nobody there, but curiosity made me hesitate to go away. DANGER! DANGER!
Then I heard something move. My first instinct was to run. My second was that it might only be a rat. My third was that if Wills was in there with his horrible friends, I wanted to know what they were doing. I’d had enough of all the secrecy. I’d had enough of his friends interfering in my life. I’d had enough of his friends all together. What could they do to me if I did barge in on them, except call me more rude names? At least if Wills knew I knew whatever it was he was up to, he might think twice about continuing with it, especially if I said I was definitely going to tell Mom and Dad.
I squatted down and pushed gently again at the door, cursing because it squealed at every nudge and gave away the fact that I was there. I steeled myself to come face to face with a welcome party as I crawled on my hands and knees through the gap. I stood up to find that on the other side of the door a narrow concrete staircase rose steeply to an upper floor. I waited at the bottom for a few seconds and listened, trying to blot out the whooshing of blood in my head. There was no sound. I crept up the first three steps, but hesitated again. My nerve was deserting me. Why was I putting myself through this? I didn’t have to. Why didn’t I just make up my mind that there
