The First Day of Spring

his face under the rolls. Didn’t matter. I already knew what it looked like—gray as gone-bad liver, eyes like staring marbles. He had stopped blinking. I had noticed that when I’d got done killing him. It had been strange to see someone not blink for so long. When I’d tried to do it my eyeballs had burned. His mammy stroked his hair and howled, and Donna’s mammy broke through the crowd to kneel beside her, and Richard’s mammy and Michael’s mammy and all the other mammies swarmed and cried. I didn’t know what they were crying for. Their kids weren’t dead.

It took Linda and Paula a long time to catch up with the rest of us. When they arrived in the blue-house alley Linda was holding Paula’s wet nappy.

“Do you know how to get this back on her?” Linda asked, holding it out to me. I didn’t answer, just leaned round so I could carry on watching the heap of howling mammies. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“Steven’s there,” I said.

“Was he in the blue house?” she asked.

“He was dead in the blue house,” I said. “Now his mammy’s got him, but he’s still dead.”

“How did he die?” she asked.

“Don’t know,” I said. I knew.

Paula sat down on the ground beside me, her bare bottom nestling into the dirt. She moved her chubby hands around until she found a little stone, which she ate carefully. Linda sat on my other side and watched the mammies. Paula ate three more stones. People muttered and whispered and cried and Steven’s mammy stayed hidden under a shawl of breasts and pink cardigans. Susan was there. She was Steven’s sister. She was standing away from the mammies, away from the crowd. No one seemed to see her except me. It was like she was a ghost.

When the sun started to go down Paula’s mammy came over, picked her up, hooked a stone out of her mouth, and took her home. Linda had to go too, because she said her mammy would have tea on the table. She asked if I was coming but I said no. I stayed until a car purred up and two policemen got out, tall and smart with shiny buttons on their clothes. One of them crouched and talked to Steven’s mammy in words I couldn’t hear, even when I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth, which usually helped me hear things grown-ups wanted to keep secret. The other one went into the blue house. I watched him slink through the downstairs rooms, and I thought about shouting, “I killed him upstairs. You need to look upstairs.” I bit my lips shut. I couldn’t give the game away.

I wanted to stay watching, at least until the policeman got to looking in the right place, but Mr. Higgs from number 35 told me to run along. When I stood I was patterned with lines and bumps from the ground. I could see Steven better from standing. His legs were flopped over his mammy’s arm, and I could see that one of his shoes had come off, and that he had mud on his knees. Susan was the only other kid still there, because she didn’t have anyone waiting for her at home anymore. Her arms were crossed over her chest and she was holding on to her shoulders, like she was hugging herself, or holding her pieces together. She looked thin and glowy. When she flicked her hair out of her face she saw me, and I was about to wave, but Mr. Higgs took me by the elbow.

“Come on, lass,” he said. “Time to go now.” I wriggled away. I thought he would just shoo me off, but he walked me all the way back to the streets, close beside me the whole time. I could hear his breath: hard and panty. It felt like slugs leaving slime on my skin.

“Look at that sky,” he said, pointing above our heads. I looked. It was all blue.

“Yeah,” I said.

“First day of spring,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“First day of spring and a little lad lying dead,” he said. He made a tutting sound with his tongue on the roof of his mouth.

“Yeah,” I said. “Dead.”

“You’re not scared are you, lass?” he asked. I climbed onto Mr. Warren’s front garden wall. “The police’ll sort this out, you know. There’s nothing for you to be scared of.”

“There’s nothing I am scared of,” I said.

When I got to the end of the wall I jumped down and ran all the way back to the house. I took the shortcut, the one where you had to squeeze through the gap in the car park fence. I couldn’t take the shortcut when I was with Linda because she couldn’t fit through the gap, but it was easy for me. People always said I was small for eight.

None of the lights were on in the house. I clicked the front door shut behind me and flicked the switch on the wall, but nothing happened. There was no more lectric. I hated when there was no more lectric. It meant the telly didn’t work and the house was dark-dark-dark with no way of making it light, and I got scared of the things I couldn’t see. For a while I stood still in the hallway, listening for Mam. I didn’t think Da would be there, but I listened for him too, stretching my ears like I could magic up his noises just by listening hard enough. Everything was quiet. Mam’s handbag was on the floor by the stairs and I found a packet of biscuits inside. They were my favorite kind—sand-colored, dotted with dead-fly raisins—and I ate them lying on my bed, remembering to chew on the side of my mouth without the rotten tooth in it. When they were all gone I held my hands up above my face and stretched out my fingers in starfish spikes. I waited until all the blood had drained away, then brought