“Where’s that little girl you had that time?” I asked Donna.
“Ruthie?”
“Yeah.”
“Her mammy doesn’t like her playing out a lot,” she said. “She thinks it’s not safe.”
I wished Ruthie was there. I remembered slapping her arm. I’d enjoyed that. Linda joined in the clapping games but I didn’t because clapping games were for babies. I climbed the tree instead, crouched in the branches, and looked across at the alleys. I could just see the edge of the blue house, and looking at it made my belly fizz. I hung down from a high branch by my hands.
“Look! Look at me!” I shouted. Donna barely even stopped clapping.
“Anyone can do that,” she said. “You’re not special.”
“Well I know something special, lamp girl,” I said. My arms were starting to come loose in their sockets but I didn’t drop down.
“What?” asked Betty.
“I know who killed Steven,” I said. I didn’t need to remember; it was already there, at the front of my brain. Saying it felt like a delicious firework that would never stop exploding.
“Oh, shut up, Chrissie,” said Donna. “Stop showing off. Steven died ages ago. No one even cares anymore.”
My fingers slipped and I fell. Donna laughed. Rage ballooned inside me, a sharp lasso. I kicked her in the back, and Betty squawked and slapped my ankle. I kicked her too. They both cried, so I called them crybabies, and Linda fussed over them so I called her a sick brain. The crying was very boring to watch. When it had been going on for maybe seven hours I told Linda to come and have a hanging-upside-down-on-the-swing-poles competition with me.
“No,” she said. “I’ve got to look after Pete.”
“Betty?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “My back hurts.”
“Lamp girl?” I asked.
“No,” said Donna. “I don’t like you. And that’s not my name.”
“WHY DOES NOBODY LIKE ME?” I roared. Nobody said what they were supposed to say—that they did like me really—so I sat under the tree in a cross heap, pulling up handfuls of grass.
“People do too still care who killed Steven,” I said when everyone had stopped sniveling.
“Who did, then?” asked Betty. Donna elbowed her to show that that wasn’t the right thing to have said at all.
“Not telling,” I said. I wasn’t going to waste it on them.
“See,” said Donna. “You don’t know.”
“I do too know,” I said. “But I’m not telling. Linda, come on. Let’s go somewhere else.”
She had rolled onto her back and put her legs in the air, and she was helping Pete balance on the soles of her feet. He squealed and gripped her hands.
“I want to stay here,” she said.
“Well I don’t,” I said.
“You go if you want to,” she said. “I’m staying. Pete’s having fun. I’m staying with him.”
The ticking got louder. Each tick sounded like a door slamming. I looked at Pete’s chubby arms and legs, his head tipped toward Linda’s chest.
“You look so stupid, Linda,” I said. “Everyone can see your underpants.” She put Pete down and pulled at her dress. “Let’s play hide-and-seek,” I said.
Pete clapped his hands. “Hidey seek! Hidey seek!”
Ticking. Louder. Fizzing. Thrumming.
“Come on,” I said. “Linda, you can count.”
She looked surprised, because usually when we played hide-and-seek I was the first one to count, and then sometimes I was the second and third and fourth and only one to count if that was what I wanted.
“Okay,” she said. “Pete, come on, you be on my team.”
“No,” I said. I took his wrist. “He’s on my team.”
He whined and reached for Linda, but I bent down next to him. “If you come with me I’ll give you jelly babies,” I said in his ear. He stopped whining and clapped his hands. I didn’t have any jelly babies. He didn’t know that.
“Are you sure you want to go with Chrissie?” Linda asked him.
He nodded. “Hidey seek!” he chirruped.
“You can’t make him hide anywhere dangerous,” she said.
“I know,” I said.
“All right,” she said. “Shall I do thirty or forty?”
“A hundred,” I said.
“What? We never do a hundred. That’s too long.”
“No it’s not. We’ll be able to get into better hiding places if you do a hundred. Go on. Just do it.”
She looked at Donna and Betty, but Betty was busy trying to repair one of her daisy chains and Donna was busy looking like a lamp and a potato at the same time. She turned toward the tree.
“One . . . two . . . three . . .”
Donna and Betty ran off together, into the bushes at the back of the playground. I pulled Pete in the other direction. Toward the gate. Out of the playground. Up the street and round the corner. The ticking in my ears was so loud I was sure the rest of the world must be able to hear it. Pete was already having to trot to keep up, but I needed him to go faster. Once we turned the corner we couldn’t see the playground anymore, and I couldn’t hear Linda at the tree. I tried to keep count in my head, giving each tick a number. I thought she must be on about thirty. I had seventy more ticks until she started looking.
By the end of Copley Street, Pete’s wonky foot was dragging on the ground. I could see the alleys, but we weren’t close enough. If Linda started looking now she would find us before we got there. Pete pulled his wrist out of my hand and stopped in the middle of the pavement.
“Come on,” I said. “Walk.”
“Babies?” he said, reaching up.
“You can have one when we get there,” I said. I pointed to the blue house. “There, see? That’s where we need to get to. That’s the hiding place.” I lifted him up and walked a few steps with him on my hip, but he was heavy and kept slipping down.
“Come on. Walk,” I said again when he landed
