Me: ‘Yes you do. You’re only vexed because you didn’t see it. It was like a river. You could even swim in it.’
Lydia: ‘Advise yourself.’
I even wanted to jump in it like a fish. If I held my breath long enough I could dive right down to the bottom and if I came up again and I was still alive it would be like the dead boy was still here. He could be my air or the light I saw when I opened my eyes again. I held my breath and tried to feel my blood going round. I couldn’t even feel it. If I knew my blood was going to run out in five minutes, I’d just fill that five minutes with all my favourite things. I’d eat a hell of Chinese rice and do a cloud piss and make Agnes laugh with my funny face, the one where I make my eyes go crooked and stick my tongue right up my nose. At least if you knew you could be ready. It’s not fair otherwise.
Paradiddle just means a drum roll. It’s my favourite word of today. In Music we played the drums. A drum roll is when you hit the drum proper quick with two sticks and make it last a long time. I love paradiddle because it sounds like the sound it makes. Asweh, it’s very clever.
The big drum at the bottom (bass drum) has a pedal. You actually play it with your foot. It’s brutal. Most people hit the drums too hard like they’re trying to break them. It’s just a game to them. I only hit them hard enough to make a good sound. I showed Poppy Morgan how to move your foot so the bass drum keeps the same pattern. It’s easier if you count in your head. You always count up to four. You hit the pedal on every one. Like this:
1
2 3 4
1
2 3 4
And you just repeat it for as long as it feels right. Or you can hit the pedal on one and three to make a faster rhythm:
1
2
3
4
1
2
3
4
But that one’s a bit too fast, it makes you feel crazy like you’re going to fall off. When I was showing Poppy Morgan how to play the bass drum I smelled her hair by mistake. I got too close and then I just smelled it. It was honey flavour. Poppy Morgan’s hair is yellow like the sun. When she smiles to me it makes my belly turn over, I don’t even know why.
You can only see the car park and the bins from my balcony. You can’t see the river because the trees are in the way. You can see more and more houses. Lines and lines of them all everywhere like a hell of snakes and smaller flats where the old people and never-normals live (never-normals is what Jordan’s mamma calls the people who are not right in the head. Some of them were born like that and some of them went like it from drinking too much beer. Some of them look just like real people only they can’t do sums or talk properly).
Mamma and Lydia were both snoring like crazy pigs. I put my coat on and got some flour. It was very late. The helicopters were out looking for robbers again, I could hear them far away. The cold wind bit into my bones like a crazy dog. The trees behind the towers were blowing but the river was asleep. Papa and Agnes and Grandma Ama were all dreaming me, they were watching like I was on TV. The pigeon could feel me waiting for him, he was going to come back tonight, I just knew it.
I waited for the wind to move, then I put a nice big pile of flour on the handrail. I spread it out proper long so the pigeon could see it from miles away. Adjei, the wind came back quick quick and blew it off! I just had to hope he’d smell my plan and come back. I like their orange feet and the way their heads move when they’re walking like they’re listening to invisible music.
I love living on floor 9, you can look down and as long as you don’t stick out too far nobody on the ground even knows you’re there. I was going to do a spit but then I saw somebody by the bins so I swallowed it back up again. He was kneeling on the floor by the bottle bank. He was poking his hand under like he dropped something there. I couldn’t see his face because his hood was up.
Me: ‘Maybe it’s the robber! Quick, helicopter, here’s your man! Shine your torchlight down there!’ (I only said it inside my head.)
He pulled something from under the bin. It was all wrapped up. He looked all around and then he unwrapped the wrapping and I saw something shiny underneath. I only saw it for one second but it had to be a knife. It’s the only thing I can think of that’s shiny and pointy like that. He wrapped it up again and put it down his pant, then he ran away sharp-sharp towards the river. It was some funny thing. The helicopters didn’t even see him. They didn’t follow him or anything, they were too high up. He runs proper funny like a girl with his elbows all sticking out. I bet I’m faster than him.
I wanted to keep watching for if something else happened but I had to greet the chief too bad. I waited as long as I could. I don’t know why the pigeon never came. He thinks we’re going to kill him but we’re not. I just want something that’s alive that I can feed and teach tricks to.
I watched the sun come up and saw the boy off to school, I start every day with the taste of his dreams in my mouth. The taste of all your dreams. You look so blameless from up here, so busy. The way you flock around an object of curiosity, or take flight from an intrusion, we’re more alike than you give us credit for. But not too alike.
This is me nine storeys up, perched on a windowsill quietly straining the remnants of my last millet meal. This is me pitying you, that your lives are so short and nothing’s ever fair. I didn’t know the boy who died, he wasn’t mine. But I do know the shape of a mother’s grief, I know how it clings like those resilient blackberries that prosper by the side of a motorway. Sorry, and everything. Now watch your heads, I need to. There she blows. Don’t shoot the messenger.
Every time somebody shuts their door too hard my flat shakes. You can even feel it. When one person shuts a door everybody else feels it as well. It’s even brutal, it’s like you’re all living in the same big house. You can pretend like it’s an earthquake. Mr Tomlin said an earthquake only happens in the parts of the world where the rocks are too ticklish. Everybody laughed. Mr Tomlin is very funny. He even makes better jokes than Connor Green.
I only don’t like it when the shouting gets too loud. It makes me jump right out of my skin. It sounds like invaders coming to kill us. When the shouting gets too near I just turn the sound up on the TV to hide it.
If any invaders come it’s my job to send them away. That’s what the man of the house is there for. We always keep the chain on the door and the locks locked up so the invaders can’t get in. If they get inside we have to chook them with a fork (you can’t chook them with a knife because it’s murder. Forks is not. Forks is just self-defence). I’ll stand in front of Lydia to protect her. And Mamma as well if she’s home. While I’m fighting the invaders Lydia or Mamma are calling the police. I’d aim for the eye because it’s the softest part. It would just make them blind. Then when they can’t see anything I’d push them outside and into the lift. The lift is safe.
It’s only if invaders come. It might not even happen.
I looked through the spyhole. It was only Miquita and Chanelle. I unlocked the locks and let them in.
Miquita: ‘What’s this, security?’
Lydia: ‘Just let them in, Harrison.’
Me: ‘Don’t call me Harrison, you’re not Mamma.’
Asweh, Lydia always acts like the boss when her friends come around. She’s always bluffing and telling me to go to my room and do my homework. I don’t want to go to my room. She only wants me to go so they can watch Hollyoaks. They think it’s the greatest. It’s only people kissing all the time. Sometimes it’s even a boy kissing another boy! I swear by God, it’s true! They’re just disgusting.
Me: ‘I’m telling Mamma you were watching kissing. It’s disgusting.’
Then Lydia shuts the door in my face. She waits until I’m proper close, then she shuts the door. It’s very mean. She never used to shut the door in my face. Now she does it all the time just so her stupid friends can laugh at me.
Me: ‘Let me in!’
Lydia: ‘Miquita doesn’t want you to come in. You keep pinching her behind.’
Me: ‘Don’t bring yourself! No I don’t.’
It’s not even true. I’ve never pinched Miquita’s behind. I’d rather put my fingers in a fire ants’ nest. Miquita and Chanelle are both dey touch, they’re always bluffing about all the boys they’ve sucked off (it means harder kissing). Miquita has a cherry lipstick. It actually tastes like cherry. She’s always putting it on her lips. She says she wants to taste nice and sweet for when she kisses me.
Me: ‘You’re never going to kiss me. I’ll just split.’
Miquita: ‘Where to? There’s nowhere to run. Don’t be scared just ’cause you love me too much.’
Me: ‘I don’t even love you. I wish you’d fall down a hole.’
Miquita could be pretty if she kept her mouth shut. She sat on my hand and I went all hot. It was only an accident, I didn’t mean to feel her behind. Anyway she bluffs too much, she’s always abusing our TV just because it’s made of wood and it’s very old. We got it from the cancer shop, it used to belong to a dead person. The picture doesn’t come straight away, you have to wait for it to warm up. When the picture first comes it’s proper dark, then the real colours come after. The whole thing takes donkey hours. You can even go and greet the chief in the time between turning the TV on and the picture coming. I even tried it and it works.
Miquita isn’t going to the dead boy’s funeral. She didn’t know him.
Miquita: ‘What’s the point, man? All funerals are the same, innit.’
Me: ‘It’s only for respect.’
Miquita: ‘But I don’t respect him. It’s his own fault he got killed, he shouldn’t have been fronting. You play with fire you get burned, innit.’
Me: ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, you weren’t even there. He didn’t even front anybody, the killer just wanted his Chicken Joe’s.’
Miquita: ‘Whatever. You don’t know shit, you’re just a kid.’
Me: ‘You don’t know either. Asweh, you’re just a fool.’
Miquita:
‘Asweh, asweh! Asweh by God!
You sound like a little yappy dog. Get out of my face now, you’re vexing me.’
Me: ‘Well your face is vexing me, fish lips.’
I just split before I got too red-eyes. If Miquita ever sucks me off I’ll kill her. She’s too disgusting and she’s got fat hands.
The shopping centre doors open by magic. You don’t even have to touch them. There’s a big sign with all the rules written on it:
NO
ALCOHOL
NO
BICYCLES
NO
DOGS
NO
SKATEBOARDS
NO
SMOKING
NO
BALL
GAMES
Underneath the real rules somebody has written a new rule in pen:
NO
FUGLIES
A fugly is a girl who always wants a baby from you. Dean Griffin told me about them.
Dean: ‘If you kiss a fugly she’ll have a baby every time. You only need to look at ’em for too long and you’ll put a bun in their oven, I swear. They’re rancid, man, stay well away.’
You don’t even want to get too close, they have scabs on their face and they smell like cigarettes. Their babies smell like cigarettes as well. We pretended like the fuglies were going to get us. They were zombies and they were all after us, we had to get away. If one of them kissed us we’d change into a fugly zombie. It was very funny. We got away just in time.
Dean’s my second-best friend. He’s my best friend at school and Jordan is my best friend outside of school. It’s Dean who told me to put my dinner money in my sock so the robbers can’t find it. He does it all the time, now he never gets robbed anymore.
I tried it but it felt too lumpy. I couldn’t walk properly. I just keep my dinner money in my pocket. Nobody will rob me anyway, I haven’t done anything to them.
Me: ‘Do you think it’s the dead boy’s own fault they chooked him? That’s what my sister’s friend said. I don’t believe her. I think she might be a fugly. Do you think they’ll catch who did it?’
Dean: ‘Don’t bet on it, the coppers round here ain’t got the skills. They should get
CSI
on the case, they’ll crack it in no time.’
Me: ‘What’s a CSI?’
Dean: ‘They’re like the top detectives in America, they know the best tricks and they can find the clues that no one else has even thought of. It’s not just on telly, it’s real. I seen this one, there was this gang going round busting people up, like just with baseball bats and stamping on their heads and stuff.’
Me: ‘Why?’
Dean: ‘I dunno, just for a laugh. And there was no witnesses or nothing but
CSI
got this special computer program that can tell what kind of trainers you’ve got just from the pattern on the bottom, yeah? And they matched the footprints on the dead man’s face to the killer’s footprints, that’s how they got him. It was well smart.’
Me: ‘That is well smart. They should do the same thing here. Maybe we could find the footprints.’
Dean: ‘Maybe, but our technology’s shit though, innit. We ain’t even got the right equipment. Oi, watch it!’
Terry Takeaway nearly crashed into us. He was running like a maniac. He didn’t even see us. He had a big tray of chickens under his arm. I knew it was too heavy. The tray slipped and some of the chickens fell off. Terry Takeaway didn’t even stop, he just carried on running. His eyes were all big from concentrating, it was very funny. We had to jump out of the way.
Butcher: ‘Come back here you little f—er!’
The butcher tried chasing him but he was too fat. He just gave up. The other pissheads were waiting outside on the big library steps. They all took a chicken and went running off in every direction. Even Asbo ran away. He just thought it was a game. He was barking like crazy. We even wanted them to get away. Asweh, it was very funny. Dean said we should come this way every day. We made it a new rule.