“Look,” Sim said. “The police are looking for three kids
riding two scooters, not two kids just walking along. We can’t keep jumping into bushes.”
I nodded, wincing at the pain in my chest from where I’d landed. “We’ve got to be quick, though. You sure it’s left?”
So we clambered back over onto the road and hurried along. Sim’s memory was spot-on and we came to the field with the gate. Instead of cutting straight across like we had done on the scooters, we kept to the edge all the way around. We found the gap between the trees and ducked under the low-hanging branches onto the rutted dirt track. All the time I kept expecting to see Kenny’s twisted body.
Sim said, “These branches could’ve knocked him off if he wasn’t looking.” He called Kenny’s name in a half hiss, half shout.
Nothing.
We crept along the track, getting closer to the dry ditch that separated it from the cow field. I was thinking if Kenny hadn’t been knocked off by those trees, then this had to be where he’d fallen. But when we got there he wasn’t anywhere to be seen.
“Kenny?” I called as loud as I dared.
Still nothing. And no dead body in the grass under the bushes.
I jumped across the ditch into the cow field. “Kenny!” I shouted.
Not a thing.
“The police’ve got him,” Sim said. “Come on, we shouldn’t hang around….”
I forced him to wait a little bit longer, just a couple of minutes—just in case. But then I had to admit it too. The police finding him was the only explanation.
“D’you think he’ll grass us up?” Sim asked.
“No. Never.” Then: “God, I hope not.”
All we could do was head back toward where we’d left the scooters. I was in a rush again now and tried not to worry about any cars that might see us. If Kenny told the police where we were going they’d never let us get all the way there.
“Maybe it’s not such a bad thing it’s just the two of us now,” Sim said.
I didn’t understand.
“After the way Kenny let Ross down,” he said. “How hard would it have been for him to go round and sort his dad’s computer out? Ross must have known his dad would go ape-shit when he found out his novel had been deleted. I bet he was bricking himself.”
“I reckon Ross would’ve still wanted it to be all three of us,” I said. “Ross was never like you. He didn’t hold grudges.”
I hadn’t meant it to come out sounding quite as harsh as that. But I was nervy, anxious—understandably so too, I reckoned. I tried to grin to prove it was a joke, but all Sim did was grunt.
I watched him out of the corner of my eye, thinking about his grudges and how desperate he’d been to blame everybody else for what had happened to Ross. Mr. Fowler, Munro, Nina, Caroline. And now Kenny too.
The sun was getting hotter. I hadn’t had a shower for far too long and reckoned it was beginning to show. We stayed quiet and thoughtful as we turned at the crossroads back toward the scooters. We heard a car. It was too close for us to run even if we wanted to. So just held our heads down looking toward each other as if we were deep in conversation. We heard it begin to slow, but neither of us looked up. Only as it passed by did we realize it was a police car.
We froze on the spot despite that sun. I didn’t know about Sim but I was holding my breath. The cop car followed the curve of the road, and the instant it was out of sight we plunged through the nearest hedgerow.
“They must’ve seen us,” Sim said.
“Course they did. They just didn’t recognize us.”
“But I didn’t see Kenny in there.”
“No. Just two coppers.”
We scurried along the inside of the hedge toward where we’d hidden the scooters. I had a horrible feeling … and it proved right. The police car had parked up at the side of the road. One of the coppers was pulling Sim’s scooter out from the bushes.
“I thought it was hidden,” he said. “Kenny must have told them where they were.”
“Kenny didn’t even know. You dropped him, remember?”
“Don’t be a shitbird, Blake,” he warned me.
We turned and headed back the way we’d come again, far enough to be well away from the police.
“So we’ve got to walk,” Sim said. “We were going to anyway. Which way?”
“The opposite way to the coppers would be a good start.” I felt like I was carrying a big neon sign with the word fugitive all lit up and flashing red. I dug the map out of my rucksack and we sat down to study it. “If we knew where we were now it might be a help. Any idea?”
Sim leaned over the map, turned it this way, then that. He shook his head. “But maybe we’re gonna be better cutting across the fields,” he said. “At least keep off the roads for a while. If we’re lucky we’ll see a landmark or something.”
It was the best idea we had. But then it was the only idea we had too.
With our best guess for the right direction, we set off straight across the field, wanting to dodge the place we’d last seen the police. We trudged on, skirting ditches, clambering through hedges, dodging cows and sheep. There were a couple of small lochs that seemed to match the map and we had to grin and clap each other on the back when we figured out we were heading more or less the way we wanted to. We picked up our pace a bit, but I was worried about Kenny. I was worried about Kayleigh too, about what her brother and dad would do to her. And I was worried about
us. I wanted to know what was going on back home, what was being said. I thought about Ross’s parents. If they’d just give me the chance to explain why we were doing this, then maybe I could get them to understand. I rehearsed a speech in my head.
We didn’t speak much. We trudged on. It passed midday, was soon one o’clock. After that first burst of hopefulness I was beginning to doubt the map again. I was hungry, and knew Sim still had a couple of apples and cartons of juice left from last night, but didn’t want to ask for them if he wasn’t offering. When I looked at him it was obvious he was wilting too. But when he saw me watching he straightened his shoulders and hid his true feelings.
“I’m beginning to think we should let everyone know we’re okay,” I said. “If they know we’re not going to kill ourselves, maybe they’ll just let us get on with it.”
“Doubt it,” Sim said. “Got to admit, though, I really want to know what’s happening—what’s being said about us. But I couldn’t call my mum or dad, they’d just go off on one. I wouldn’t get a word in edgeways. They’d be too busy bollocking me.”
“Mine too,” I admitted. “And I can’t stop thinking about what Ross’s mum and dad are gonna say to us when we get back.”
“Don’t care,” Sim said. “I reckon this is all their fault anyway. If they’d given Ross a proper funeral, we wouldn’t have to.”
“You keep blaming everyone else,” I said. “Sometimes it sounds like you think he killed himself too.”
He rounded on me. “Say that again if you want a smack!”
I held up my hands. Peace.
Sim glared at me. “I just want the people who made the last days and weeks of his life miserable to know about it.”
“Even his mum and dad?”
“If ever two parents should’ve split up, it’s Ross’s mum and dad,” Sim said. “Come on, you know what they’re like. His dad’s all arty-farty, with his writing and his
masterpiece
novel, yeah? I reckon the whole reason he was so desperate for Ross to be a writer was because he wasn’t one himself. But then his mum’s dead strict about school and says, ‘You must study hard, you must pass your exams, they are the most important things in the world.’ Did Ross ever let you read that story of his where the boy got ripped in half by his parents? You know, like physically torn in two as they pulled at him? All that blood and stuff? I reckon that was really about him, and his mum and dad.”
I had read it. It had been one of his best.
“And d’you know what Ross said to me once? His mum’s a lecturer, right? In modern languages? And one day Ross says to me, ‘Can you believe it? She speaks something like eight different languages but she still can’t understand a word I say.’”
We climbed over a wood and wire fence and were on a
narrow road—more like a country lane. I checked the map, and if it was the road I thought it was, then we were still going in the right direction. It was a relief. But I was so tired, and so sweaty, and my rucksack seemed to be getting heavier. Ross seemed to be getting heavier. But it all had to be in my head. I guessed dead people always put on weight in our minds. And I realized Sim had now added Mr. and Mrs. Fell to his grudge list. So I doubted it was going to be too long before he got round to adding me.
“Look, if we’re gonna call someone, who should it be?” I asked.
“Someone who won’t grass us up.”
“Nina,” I said. I waited for the usual bad-mouthing of her to pass and added, “She won’t grass us up.”
Sim scowled. “Wanna bet?”
I shook my head. “She won’t. Look, it’s either call her or Caroline. Who would you rather it be?”
Getting my mobile out was a good excuse to rest. So I swung my rucksack off my shoulders and sat down on the grass with my back to a hedge. I took the phone out of one of my side pockets and held it up.
“Nina?”
Sim certainly wasn’t happy but didn’t say no. We both wanted to find out what was happening back home. He hovered over me as I switched on the phone. It buzzed into life. Then as soon as it found a signal it started to chime my messages. It was once more full to capacity.
“Jesus,” Sim whispered, no doubt thinking about what was waiting for him on his own phone.
I wafted a cloud of gnats away from my face and speed-dialed Nina. I held it tight to my ear.
She picked up on the second ring.
“It’s me,” I said. Sim was standing over me, nervous and expectant. “Blake.”
There was a beat of silence. “I know it’s you,” Nina said. I’d hoped she’d sound pleased to hear from me and so the tone of her voice came as a blow. “Where are you?”
“We’re almost there.” I looked along the country lane, at the empty field over the fence. To be honest it felt closer to the middle of nowhere than ever before, so I added: “Ish.”
“You’re not there yet? You said you’d be on the way home again by now.” I could imagine the look on her face, the crease in her nose when she was angry, her wide brown eyes looking shocked. She always tucked and retucked her hair behind her ears when she was upset. She was probably sitting on the edge of her bed doing just that. “Blake, you’ve got to come back. You don’t have any idea what’s going on here—what you three have done.”
“Our pictures have been on TV. The police are after us. We know that much.”
“What were you doing in Blackpool?”
That shocked me. “She knows we were in Blackpool,” I told Sim.
“How?”
“How do you know we were in Blackpool?” I said into the phone.
“Because one of the pictures on TV is of someone who looks remarkably like you leaping off a very high bungee jump.”
“Bacon’s grassed us up,” I told Sim. “That photo of me’s been on TV.” I felt a queasy bubble of humiliation. I guessed I should be feeling frightened, but humiliation was winning hands down right that second.
“What about our parents?” I asked.
“What do you think?”
“Bad?”
“You’ve got to come home. Everybody’s upset, but Ross’s mum looks terrible. And was it you three who’ve been spraying graffiti about Ross everywhere? My dad’s gone wild.”
“Why, what’s wrong with him?”
“Because you sprayed it all over his garage doors too.”
“No,” I said. “We …” I stared hard at Sim. He must have been to Nina’s late on Friday after Kenny and I had gone home. “Has anybody tried to get in touch with you?”
“Ross’s sister has.”
“Caroline? What did she want?”
“To see if I knew what was going on.”
“Did you tell her anything?”
“No. I nearly did, but … No. But you’ve got to come home or I will. What you’re doing, it’s hurting everyone.”
I didn’t know how to answer that. The only consequences I’d been worried about had been the trouble we’d be in. I’d managed to bury any concerns about how much we might be hurting people. Even though I was sitting in lush grass in picturesque countryside on a sunny morning in June, I thought again of Mrs. Fell at the top of her stairs, and shivered.
I said, “We wouldn’t be here if Ross’s funeral had been done properly. And we’re not doing this for them, we’re doing it for him.”
“Are you?”
I knew what she was driving at, I wasn’t stupid. She thought we were doing this for us.
I turned the subject round again. “Do you know if they’ve got Kenny?” I asked.
“I thought he was with you?”
“We got split up.”
“Blake—listen. You have to come back. Just … it’s gone too far.”
I ignored her. “Tell everyone the suicide thing’s stupid. Ross didn’t. And we wouldn’t either, okay?”
She was silent for a second. Then: “Something else has happened.”
But I wasn’t listening. “You’ll tell them, yeah? We’re okay and we’ll be back soon.”
“Blake—listen!”
“Does anyone know where we’re going? Has anyone guessed?”
She sighed in annoyance. “I don’t think so, no. But—”
“Good, that’s all we wanted to know.”
“Blake, you’ve got to—”
I pressed the button to kill the call.
I sat in the grass with my head bent and blew out a long breath. The conversation had sapped me of energy but I wasn’t sure why. I stood up and said, “We’re okay for now. No one’s sussed—” My phone rang. The display said it was Nina. I apologized to her inside my head as I switched the phone off again, put it back in my bag.
“We keep going, yeah?” I said. “All she said was that we’re in trouble. Which is what we already knew anyway. Everybody back home is pissed off and angry and ape-shit. It’s worse than we wanted it to be, but … but what are they gonna do? Spank us? Ground us? Send us to Brat Camp? If there was ever a point of no return, I reckon we crossed it back near Doncaster somewhere. We’ve just got to keep going.” I swung my rucksack onto my shoulder again. “Ready?”
Sim was watching me, unspeaking but narrow-eyed and questioning.
“For Ross,” I said.
He frowned: something was bothering him. But he nodded again, put his sunglasses on.