“For fuck’s sake,” he said. “Stop with the fucking dead thing. You’re eight years old, Chris. You’re too old to believe that. Stop.”
There was a fly crawling up the doorframe. He crushed it with his fist, leaving a smear of blue-black body on the white-painted wood. Normally I loved looking at dead things. When we found dead birds in the playground I poked them with sticks, spreading the gooey insides across the ground while Donna and Linda and the other girls squealed. I only looked at the squashed fly long enough to see that one of its wings had come away from its body and was stuck on its own, like a tiny piece of stained glass. Then I looked away.
“Mam never gives me any food,” I said. “I’m so hungry. Sometimes I think I’m going to die from being so hungry.”
“Stop telling me,” he nearly shouted. “I can’t be listening to this.”
“You said you would take me away,” I said.
“I can’t. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he said. He went into the pub. I ran to the wooden fence at the end of the yard and kicked it so hard one of the boards cracked. My cheeks were hot. I wanted to go in, fight my way through the sour-smelling men, and find Da.
“I never believed it,” I wanted to shout. “Not once. Not ever. I always knew people couldn’t come back after they were dead. Even Jesus probably didn’t really come back after he was dead, he probably just stayed really quiet in the cave so everyone thought he was dead then jumped out to give them a shock. I never thought you were dead when you went away, and I never thought you came back alive when you came back to see me, and when I killed Steven I knew it would be forever, not just for a day or a week or a month. I knew he would never come back, and that was what I wanted. And the next person I kill is going to be dead forever too, and the person after that and the person after that and the person after that. I’m going to kill so many more people, and they’re all going to be dead forever, and that’s what I want.”
It didn’t matter that I had believed it about Da being dead, or that I hadn’t really realized Steven would never come back. I hated the feeling of other people thinking I was stupid more than almost any other feeling in the whole world. I didn’t want Da to think I was stupid. I looked through the back door for a long time, watching dark man shapes wind and twist around one another. I couldn’t see Da. I felt itchy and twitchy, like there were centipedes crawling over my skin, and the centipedes’ feet were made of needles. I didn’t want to be by myself. I wanted Linda. She knew how rotten it felt to have other people think you were stupid. I went to her house and rang the bell.
“Can Linda come out?” I asked when her mammy opened the door.
“No,” she said.
“Can I come in, then?” I asked.
“No,” she said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“They’re about to have their tea,” she said.
“What are they having?” I asked.
“Stew,” she said.
“I like stew,” I said.
“You’re not coming in, Chrissie,” she said. “I don’t want you playing with Linda anymore. You need to go home. To your home.”
She moved her feet on the mat, and for a moment I thought she was going to come down onto her knees and hug me, like she had done before the first day of school. I wouldn’t have minded that. I might have quite liked it. She stepped back into the hallway and closed the door. I stood still, thinking of the things I could have said if she hadn’t already closed the door.
“You can’t stop me and Linda playing together. We’re best friends. You can’t stop best friends playing together. That’s basically against the law. You can’t stop me coming round. I’ll wait until you’re out, until it’s just Linda’s da here, and then I’ll come back. He’ll let me in. You can’t make me go home. I don’t have a home. I just have a house. You can’t make me go there.”
My throat felt stretched and sore with all the words. I rubbed it and squeezed it and then I kept my hands still, resting in the place where my heartbeat scrabbled. Blood skittered under my fingers and words skittered around my head.
I am here. I am here. I am here.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
• • •
When I left the house the next morning the world was made of bright white light and I was made of noise. It wasn’t fizzing—not like the fizzing I had had before, not sherbet anymore. It was a gritty rumble, biting me at the bottom of my belly, gnawing at the place where my body turned into a secret. Like a tiger growling. Like a flame licking. I had sparklers in the ends of my fingers and the tips of my toes and the sparkling made me run the fastest I had ever run, but it wasn’t snap-bubble-whizz, it was groan-grumble-roar. I stared at the top of the street as I ran up the hill, and it looked like someone had poured blue paint into the jaggedy hole left by the rooftops jutting into the sky. I had to squint to see clearly, and when I squinted I sparkled even harder. My body wasn’t lectric. It was lava. Step-stamp-stump. Tick-tick-tock.
I got to the shop just as Mrs. Bunty was coming out to put the sign on the street. When she saw me her hands went straight to her hips.
“Come on now, Chrissie,” she said. “Enough of this. You know I’m not going to let you in to pinch things.”
“Not going to pinch anything,” I said. “I got coins.”
She laughed, which sounded like a turkey gobbling. Her
