“I’m fine,” I said.
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Can I go up to Linda’s room?”
“Course, course. Up you go. I’ll be in the shed if you need me.”
Linda had one shoe on and was hopping around, looking for the other. “Can you see my shoe?” she asked.
I sat down on her bed. “No.”
“I thought I took it off in here yesterday.”
“Doesn’t matter. Don’t want to go out.”
She came and sat next to me. “What do you want to do, then?”
“Can we lie down for a bit?”
“Eh?”
I kicked off my shoes, crawled onto the bed, and lay with my head on the pillow. She leaned over and peered at my face. “Are you poorly?” she asked.
“No. I just want to lie down for a bit.”
“Okay.”
She nudged me across and we lay top-to-toe, so our feet were next to each other’s heads. I put my cheek against her bare arch. The skin was soft and cool.
“Linda?”
“Yeah.”
“If I went away, what would you do?”
“Don’t know.”
“What would you, though?”
“Get a new best friend, I suppose.”
I didn’t much like her saying that. She made it sound as if it would be easy. “Yeah,” I said. “If you moved away I’d get a new best friend. Might get one anyway. I don’t really like you.”
“Is your da taking you away?” she asked. I flexed my foot on the pillow beside her head and one of my toenails tangled in her hair. She squeaked. I pulled away fast, even though I knew it would hurt her.
“Ow!” She pulled herself free. “That hurt.”
“My da’s not taking me away,” I said.
“Why not?” she asked.
“Because I’m the bad seed,” I said.
“Oh,” she said.
“I didn’t even want him to take me away in the first place.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t like him.”
“But he’s nice. He gave you that marble.”
“Shut up.”
Neither of us spoke for a while. Sunlight came through the branches of the tree outside and cast dappled shadows on the carpet. I could feel her hair tickling my toes.
“How comes you’re going away?” she asked.
“Just might. Might go away by myself,” I said.
“You can’t. You’re a kid,” she said.
“I can do whatever I want,” I said.
Pete started grizzling downstairs and Linda’s da started singing to him. I knew it was a made-up song, because it had Pete’s name in it. Linda’s da was always making up songs with Linda’s and Pete’s names in them, and sometimes when I was there he put my name in too. I loved it when he did that.
“Your new best friend might not be as good as me,” I said.
“Don’t know. Might be better,” said Linda.
“Probably not, though.”
“No. Probably not.”
“Will you miss me?”
“Yeah.”
“Will you write to me?”
“I’m rubbish at writing.”
“Yeah. But if I write to you will you read my letters?”
“Probably. If the words aren’t too long.”
“I won’t make them too long.”
“Okay, then. I’ll read them.”
I still had my cheek pressed against her foot, and I turned my head to the side so my lips touched the round bone at the bottom of her big toe. I kissed it. She giggled.
“What you do that for?”
I sat up. There was no more fizzing left in my belly, not the sherbet kind or the lava kind or the lectric kind, just a hollow space, like someone had reached in and clawed out everything I used to have inside me.
“Come on, Linda,” I said. “Let’s go out.”
• • •
From the outside, the blue house looked just the same as it had looked when I had walked up to it with Ruthie. Linda skipped and chattered as we went into the alleys, but I didn’t say anything. I kept looking over my shoulder to see if the beautiful woman was coming after me. I knew it wouldn’t be long before she started wondering where Ruthie was, and then it wouldn’t be long before she realized she wasn’t in the playground, and then it wouldn’t be long before everyone was searching for her. Thinking about it made me feel tired.
I went first up the crumbling stairs. Ruthie was lying where I had left her, with her dress rucked up around her underpants and her orange hair messed out around her head. When I went closer I saw there were ants gathered around the lollipop that had fallen out of her mouth. One of them was crawling up her cheek, following the trail of sticky dribble that had oozed from the corner of her lips. I crouched down beside her, lifted it away, and squashed it between my finger and thumb.
“Is she asleep?” asked Linda, coming to crouch by her other side.
“No,” I said.
“Is she poorly?”
“No.” I didn’t want to have to listen to any more of her guesses, so I said, “She’s dead.”
“How?”
“I did it.”
“You never.”
“I did.”
She stood up and walked backward until she hit the wall. My legs were starting to go numb from crouching, so I put my bottom down on the floor and rested my chin on my knees. I had a bad pain in my throat that I couldn’t remember ever having had before. I thought I must be getting tonsillitis. Linda slid down the wall like a piece of scrambled egg sliding down a plate, and she sat with her knees up to her chest too, so we were mirrors of each other. Ruthie lay between us, smaller than she had been when she was alive.
“Please don’t kill me,” said Linda.
“I won’t,” I said.
“Did you kill Steven?” she asked. “Is that why you wrote that?” She looked at the wall behind my head. I didn’t need to turn around. The words were stuck to the backs of my eyelids. I saw them every time I blinked.
I am here. I am here. I am here. You will not forget me.
Steven was stuck to the backs of my eyelids too. He was there when I blinked, when I went to sleep, his knee in my belly, my hands on his throat. I was squeezing all the life out of him, until he was lying
