Fifteen Bones Read online

  The photograph was curled at the edges. It had been mounted on black card and placed in an ornate silver frame. It showed a mum and a dad standing outside the Death House, smiling and holding a toddler. The dad wore flared corduroy trousers, a pale shirt and a large tie with blue flowers trailed across it; the mum wore a bright purple mini-dress with a matching hair band. I stared at the man, his wiry frame, his shock of blond hair, and felt for a second that I was looking at myself. I looked at his hand wrapped around the toddler’s back, reaching the bend of her ribs. I looked at the chubby-cheeked little girl with pudgy little hands gripped to her father.

  I found Mother on the stairs. “Is this you?”

  She grabbed the picture and hesitated before stomping off to the skip.

  “Mum? Mum, you’re the kid in the picture. Mum!” I followed her through the house.

  She threw the picture in the skip from enough distance for a three-pointer, but she didn’t score herself this time. I ran to retrieve it but my Kit-Kat arms couldn’t lift my idiotic body over the skip. “Mum!” I called as she barrelled back towards the house.

  “I told you not to look through that skip!”

  “Mum.” I followed her into the kitchen. “Mum.”

  “I am not cleaning new mess.”

  “But…”

  “Every time I try to do something there you are messing it up.”

  She stopped. She knew she had gone too far. I could make her stew for being so mean but I decided to cash it in straight away. “Is that you in the picture?”

  “Yes.” She shrugged.

  “But the picture was taken in front of this house.”

  “Well,” she folded her arms, “this was my parents’ house.”

  “The man who died here was your dad?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t help him?”

  “Oh, thankyouverymuch,” she said as she stomped off up the stairs.

  I followed her. “How did he die?”

  We reached the landing and I followed her into her room.

  “When did he die?”

  “I don’t know, Jake.”

  “But he was a hoarder, Mum. Mum! He couldn’t climb the stairs, Mum. Why did I never see him? Why did we never visit, Mum? Why didn’t we help him?”

  She spun on her heel. “Because he was in prison! And if you don’t clean your act up and stop being such a royal bloody pain in the arse, you’ll be next!” She pushed me out of the room and slammed the door.

  “Prison? For what?”

  No reply.

  I looked around the house, packed with newspapers and old Santa figurines, cereal boxes and the world’s biggest collection of lime green plates. Why would he make a prison of his own house? What was he hiding? And what she was looking for? This would take some investigating.

  That night the moon filled my bedroom with light. I tried to fashion curtains out of my sheets and clothes, but my clothes were all so worn down by my bones the moon streamed through anyway. I looked across into the girl’s bedroom. Nothing had moved and she was nowhere to be seen.

  I snuck out of my room and stood by my parents’ door, listening to the fretful pattern of their breathing. They hated each other even in sleep. I went outside and used the light of my phone to find the small chair and climb into the skip. I put my phone in my mouth as I searched through the poor man’s belongings, taking care not to cut myself on the broken plates. I found the photograph, slid it out from behind the broken glass and put it in my pocket.

  I switched my phone on again and I heard a small buzzing. I looked around before I realized I had called someone. Isaac. He’s smiling, I’m laughing.

  I let it ring. I liked the way it buzzed in my hands. Since it was a mistake, maybe this time he would answer.

  This is the O2 messaging service…

  I switched the phone off and felt the weight at the top of my head.

  A van pulled up outside the Toad House and I pressed myself against the wall to see what was going on. Two men, one black and one white, struggled out of the vehicle and lumbered to the door. The girl appeared on the scrap of grass outside the house. The men were laughing about something. The white man pushed her. She stumbled but didn’t fall. The white man held out a fist for her to bump and she refused. The black man did the same and she grudgingly accepted. The men squeezed back into the van, did a scrappy U-turn, and drove off. The girl hung her head as they disappeared down the joyride road, then she hesitated. She seemed to force herself to go back inside the Toad House.

  I ran into my house, checked all the doors were locked and went to my bedroom.

  In the Toad House, yelling erupted and the girl launched into her room and slammed the door. I ran my finger over the ridges of my arm. She lifted the vanity desk above her head and hurled it at the door. She paced like a cat from window to door. Her braids swished when she turned. She walked with a straight back and square shoulders.

  She took one of the legs of the vanity desk and held it like a bat. The hunched man flung open the door. She swung for him and his paw flew to his face. He stormed into the attic and started hitting the desk in such fury I could feel the blows in my room.

  The girl pressed her back against the door. She looked sadly at the space where her vanity desk had been. She grabbed her rucksack, slid open her window and dangled from the ledge. She swung her long legs backwards and jumped, landing like a cat on the garage roof. From here she leapt to the ground and ran along the muddy path through their garden. She scaled the fence without pause and began to walk down the long road with her head back and arms flying. I recognized the hesitant way her hips were tilting. She was barefoot.

  I went to run after her but found myself fixed to the ground. Very faintly Isaac sang, “There was a girl who caught my eye…”

  The next day, on the way to school, I started to cry for no reason. I don’t even know what I was thinking about. Once I’d started crying, every miserable thing from my memory clamoured its way to my face and poured out of it, and then I started shaking, so I had to lean against a wall like a drunk. I looked back down the joyless road to see what had triggered it, but there was nothing.

  I thought of Isaac. I thought of the girls at the hospital, the fragile baby birds. I thought of all the promises I had made and broken to doctors and counsellors.

  I dragged myself to Cattle Rise and barely made registration before the bell went for period one. My tutor gave me a small smile and marked me in. “Arsenal supporter?” he said.

  I recoiled. Arsenal? Something about arses? Something about guns? What was it? Could he tell I’d broken my arse or what?

  “It was a joke,” he said. “I was just asking why you looked so miserable.”

  “Oh,” I said as the bell went, “that’s funny.”

  He asked me if I was all right and I nodded and hurried off. I followed the herd to English and sat at my desk. Behind me I felt hammerhead-shark boy’s eyes boring into the back of my head.

  On each of our desks was an envelope with our name printed on it. The whiteboard read DO NOT OPEN. Miss Price stood tall and square in an orange jumper and a chunky silver necklace. Her shoulders were perfectly straight and you could see her toned muscles beneath her jumper. She didn’t have the sloping shoulders of someone who spent their teens hunched over a book and their twenties hunched over a computer. “What are you looking at?” she said.

  “Triceps,” I blurted, worried she would think I was looking at something else.

  “Triceps?” she said, glancing at her arm.

  “Triceps are hard to get,” I said. Triceps are the Holy Grail. You need to do specific exercises for them. You can’t just go out running or whatever; you have to find this tiny muscle and spend hour upon hour working it out.

  “Yep.” She flexed her muscles and laughed. “You ’ave to be well ’ard.�
��

  I smiled. “What sport are you into?”

  “I do fencing,” she said.

  This was a lie. The muscles of her arms and hands were even. No bat or weapon sports there. You get triceps from weights, climbing, dips or mad rowing. From training for something.

  She asked one of the girls to hand out the worksheets. No one ever asks me to get up and do anything. Maybe it’s because my eyes are wonky and I look like I can’t put one foot in front of the other. Or maybe it’s because I look like I’d drop dead if I lost any more calories.

  “How’s your neighbour doing?”

  “She’s in some trouble, I think.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “I don’t know. She leaves her house in the night, goes off on her own.”

  “Have you tried to talk to her?”

  “Yeah, right. Why would she talk to me?”

  “You’re a personable kind of fellow.” Miss Price smiled.

  “I get punched a lot.”

  Miss Price smiled, but now the rest of the class were clambering into their seats and hollering for attention. I checked my phone. He’s smiling; I’m laughing.

  “Whas eez?” they yelled as they plonked down on the plastic seats.

  “You’ll see,” Miss Price said.

  “Whassis?” a girl shrieked as she went to rip her envelope open.

  “Don’t open it,” Miss Price warned gently.

  “Why?” she said. “It’s got my name on it.”

  “Well done, genius,” I said.

  “Shut your marf, queer!”

  I did shut my mouth. I couldn’t bear to be in a classroom. I just wanted to register and get out of there.

  Another kid crashed in. “Why’s my name on it?”

  “You’ll see, Blessing,” Miss Price smiled.

  “Why’s my name on it?” she yelled.

  “It’s just … it’s just a bit of fun. Jesus,” Miss Price snapped and the commotion stopped. She laughed. “Wow, you actually made me lose my world-famous temper.”

  The class laughed with her.

  “Right,” she said, “today we—”

  Darscall lolloped in. My stomach twisted. He lobbed his suitcase-sized bag across to his chair before thumping into place and kicking his trunk-like legs under the table. The class had to reshuffle to accommodate him.

  “You’re late, Richard,” Miss Price said.

  “Whassis?” he grunted, ripping at his envelope. The class groaned and he invited everyone to shut up or die.

  “Now,” Miss Price said, clapping her hands. “Today we’re going to—”

  “Why’s it got my name on it?” Darscall interrupted.

  “It’s magic,” Miss Price said, rolling her eyes.

  “I don’t like fings with my name on it. What’s in it?”

  “Now today we’re—”

  “WHY’S MY NAME ON IT?” he bellowed.

  “Richard, it’s just—”

  He ripped the envelope open.

  “Ritchie, wait! You’ll ruin the—”

  He read the piece of paper and slapped it down on his desk. “S’only crap from Macbeff.”

  “Shut up, Rich,” Bash said.

  “Shut up, shoe bomber. Don’t tell me to shut up. Shut up.”

  “Current racial slur,” Bash said.

  “Back where you come from innit!”

  “Where, Tooting?”

  The class laughed.

  “I’ll see you,” Darscall said and Bash backed down. My heart seized. At this point Isaac would make a joke and everyone would laugh, and it would break the tension. But everyone had their heads bowed.

  “Don’t open the—” Miss Price said as Darscall’s minions ripped open their envelopes.

  “Mine’s from Arse … total,” one minion grunted.

  “Aristotle,” Miss Price said in despair.

  “‘A friend is a second self’,” the minion scoffed. “What? Friends is ghosts?”

  “‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’?” Darscall bellowed, disgusted. He curled his lip, kicked at the table and yelled, “Tomorrow and tomorrow notes with my name on?” Miss Price put her hand to her head. “I don’t want fings with my name on it, got it?”

  “I …” Miss Price spoke quietly, her lips flattening.

  “Yeah. Got it, bitch?” he said.

  The class was silent.

  Miss Price’s lips thinned as she fought tears. I felt terrible for her, plus I really, really wanted her to register me so I could get out.

  “You,” Darscall yelled, ready for another onslaught. “You go—”

  “Gnurrrr,” I grunted.

  Silence.

  My tongue hung in my mouth. “Guuuur, I don’t want fings wiv my name on it! I only want ovva fings.” In the silence, Darscall turned, dumbstruck. The class looked on in delighted horror. “Unnnuh! Wassis?” I picked up a pen. “Wassis fing? I doan like dis fing! Whas it do?” I opened the pen and mimed trying to figure out what it was, then jabbing my eye out with it. “Owwwww! The jabby blue fing bit me. Bloo stick bit me! Mummy! Bloo stick bit me.”

  The class laughed. Darscall was hang-mouthed.

  I stood up, hooked my thumb into my trousers, and looked down at my pants. “Wassis fing? Was it do? Was eez?” I pulled up my pants. “Why’s it got my name on it? Mummy! Why’s my name on it? Mummy? Why’s my name wrote on it? I don’t like fings wiv my name on it. It’s my name. Arrrrr!” I mimed ripping up my underpants. The class covered their mouths and howled with laughter.

  I heard Miss Price yell as Darscall knocked me to the floor.

  “Rape! Rape!” I yelled and got a few laughs before the weight of Darscall drowned my senses.

  Darscall’s hand stopped mid-punch as Miss Price hauled him from me. He was loudly removed and when that palaver was over there were only ten minutes of the lesson left and Miss Price was too shaken to take us through what she’d prepared. We kept quiet as she put her head in her hands and bit her lips.

  “Are you all right, miss?” Clarissa asked as the bell went. No one moved.

  Miss Price nodded. “I didn’t think it would be like this,” she said.

  There was a long silence. We all felt sorry for ourselves.

  “I like my envelope,” Poppy said.

  “Yeah, I like mine,” Bash said. “I like English.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” I said. I made sure she saw me put my envelope in my pocket. “I’ll finish it at home.”

  “Be careful – Jake,” Miss Price said, pausing before my name again. I nodded as I walked out. Isaac would have made everyone laugh. I made everyone other than Darscall laugh. There was a big difference.

  The gate was open, but I couldn’t risk walking across the open space. I’d have to hide until long after the bell had gone. I went to visit the Insain Bolts, and then I hid in an empty classroom and edited the Apple Pie sketch until I heard the school keepers kicking everyone out.

  I bit the zip of my coat and walked home. The odd black-and-orange decoration was a timid recognition of Halloween. Skeletons clacked in the wind and reminded me of Meadow Gorge. “Hello,” I said as I walked past.

  Buses bombed past but I didn’t get on one. I never would. I was too scared of being cornered, or being felt up by some pervert, or stuck beside some racist rant. No, thank you.

  Kids hung around the bus stops, harassing each driver and never successfully getting on the bus for free. They screeched, threw things and would love to take their frustration out on someone like me. I kept my head down and kept walking.

  With no lighting and no exits, my Crimewatch road looked like it was built by murderers. The breeze pushed foils across the pavement. It was deathly quiet.

  I stopped.

  My eye caught the tail end of a pack o
f kids lingering near my house. Two of them were on bikes. One pedalled towards me. The others followed like a swarm. It was so typical of a nightmare, of the thing I’m afraid of every time I step outside, that it didn’t seem real. It was as if I had willed them into life.

  The pack moved towards me, blocking the path to my house.

  The blackness shifted. The bikes pedalled behind me and blocked me in. Their clothes were so dark they melted to the road. One had a sunken face with a compacted jaw and skin as pale as cheese. One was much smaller, a child.

  The child spoke. “That him?”

  The alpha’s skull swam in the canopy of a hood. I was trapped. I couldn’t run, I would get jumped. I couldn’t get to my house. I couldn’t turn back.

  The only way out was the Toad House. I would have to walk up that dark path, beneath that blinking red light, and pray that someone would let me in before they got to me.

  The gang jerked towards me. A warning punch. I turned and ran the muddy path of the Toad House. The house seemed to lean towards me as I neared it, swelling with the screaming and misery that filled its wet walls. The gang hustled around the weak fence and strained with laughter. I shoved my clammy hands in my pockets and pretended to look for my key. The red security light blinked in my eyes.

  “That your house or what, little boy?” one kid said.

  The way they kept saying “house” sounded like how Americans say “arse”.

  “That ain’t ’is ass.”

  “Look at this gaylord. Ain’t ’is ass.”

  “Who’s this queer gone the wrong ass.”

  “Oi, Mul, get ’im. That ain’t is ass!”

  “Get yer own ass!”

  I knocked at the door and prayed.

  Nothing.

  “Please,” I whispered. I was kiss-close to the fish-eye on the front door. “Please.”

  Lowering my head, I glanced at the gang. They waited, salivating. I looked at their sunken chests, their hungry mouths. I couldn’t feel the backs of my knees. I thought of my weak bones, and my bloodied kidneys, and of the fad for stabbing people in the armpit. Their fingers twitched in their pockets.