“Yeah,” I said. “I killed him.” I had imagined saying it so many times, and in my head it had always sounded shiny. Out loud it sounded dull. Linda didn’t say I wasn’t her best friend anymore or that I couldn’t come to her birthday party. She said the other thing she always said when I did something she didn’t like.
“I’m going to tell my mammy.”
She inched herself up the wall with her eyes on me, as if she thought I would leap forward and put my hands on her neck if she moved too quickly. I stayed sitting. I was too tired to do any more killing. I was too tired to do anything at all.
“All right,” I said. She snaked an arm around her back the way she had done when Miss White had been trying to get her to tell the time at school, the way she always did when she was frightened or didn’t know the right thing to do. She stood still.
“Why did you?” she asked.
“Why did I what?”
“Kill them.”
Tightness crept into my face. I put my hands on my cheeks so she couldn’t see them turning pink.
“It was just an accident,” I whispered.
“You can’t kill people by accident,” she said.
“I thought they would come back,” I whispered.
“People don’t come back when they’re dead,” she said.
“I just wanted to,” I said.
“Why, though?”
“Because it wasn’t fair.”
“What wasn’t?”
“Just everything,” I said. You couldn’t understand about fair and unfair when you had a mammy who made scones and a da who put your name into songs.
“Why did you make me come?” she asked.
“Just did,” I said.
“But I’m going to tell my mammy now. Everyone’s going to know it was you,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Do you want people to know it was you?” she asked.
“I used to,” I said.
“Do you now?” she asked.
“I’m just really tired now,” I said.
It wasn’t really true. I felt different to tired, more than tired. I felt the way I had felt the time we had been playing hide-and-seek and I had snuck into the church to hide under the altar. I had curled up small and listened to my heart bamming in my chest, smelled the dusty smell of hymnbooks and old yawns. Donna was doing the seeking. I waited for her to find me. The longer she took, the more excited I got, because I was more and more sure that I had won. I waited until my knees went numb. I waited until my back seized up. I waited until the chill of the church got into my bones and made me stiff and sore. It was lonely, being hidden.
In the end I crawled out from under the altar and went back to the streets. I found Linda peering into the bushes at the side of the car park. When she saw me she smiled.
“There you are!” she said.
“Donna’s meant to be seeking,” I said.
“She got bored,” she said. “She went home for dinner. Everyone did.”
“Why didn’t you?” I asked.
She looked confused. “We hadn’t found you,” she said.
“You could have just given up,” I said. “The others did.”
“I didn’t want to give up,” she said. “I wanted to find you.”
“Why?”
“That’s the whole point of the game.”
“But you could have given up on the game. You could have played another game without me. Why did you want me?”
“Don’t know. You’re my best friend. I like you.”
I hugged her. She was taller than me, so my face pressed against her collarbones. I squeezed so tight I felt like we would turn into one girl. Squeezed and squeezed and breathed her in and thought, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
That was how I had felt after I had killed Ruthie—not strong and sparkly like after I killed Steven, but cold and numb like when I was crouched under the altar. It had stopped being fun. I didn’t want to be hidden anymore. I just wanted Linda.
“You’re going to go to prison,” she said. She didn’t look like she was going to hug me or tell me she liked me this time.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Probably for the whole rest of your life,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Won’t you miss your mammy?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
She took a step to the side, so she was closer to the stairs, but she didn’t go down them. She still had her hand behind her, hanging on to the end of one of her plaits. When she pulled it her head tipped back and the skin on her neck stretched taut. I could see the veins under the surface. I could almost see the blood pumping through them.
“I’ll have to get a new best friend,” she said.
“Will it be Donna?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Maybe. Donna or Betty.”
“Donna’s got a bike.”
“Donna, then.”
The pain in my throat spread down to my chest. I felt like I was being opened up, like a book being cracked at the spine, and then I was crying, and I knew why I had never felt the pain in my throat before. It was because it was crying pain, and I never cried.
“You’re crying,” said Linda. “You never cry.”
I didn’t make any crying sounds. I let the tears fall down my cheeks and plop onto the bib of my dress, where they soaked into penny-sized patches. It was the same way I had seen Susan cry when we had been drinking milk at the handstand wall. Silent and still. I hadn’t understood it at all back
