Run, Zan, Run
Authors: Cathy MacPhail
RUN ZAN RUN
CATHY MACPHAIL
For my Katie
Contents
Katie trudged over the dump. This way at least she wouldn’t meet Ivy Toner and her gang. It was the long road home from school, through the patch of waste ground where the city’s tenements once stood. It was growing dusky in the late October afternoon. But Katie wasn’t afraid. Not here. She was safer here, deserted though it was, than she’d be walking through the busy streets and lanes of the town.
Alone. She was so often alone nowadays. Her friends, one by one, had deserted her. Too afraid to be friendly in case they, merely by association with her, became the target for the bullying, the cruelty of Ivy Toner.
Katie kicked at a stone and looked around the dismal place. People dumped their rubbish here now. Black bags littered the area – cardboard boxes lay askew on the ground. A dump – a real dump – yet she was safer here.
She could feel the tears nip at her eyes, but she wouldn’t cry.
Everyone told her one day Ivy Toner would grow tired of picking on her and move on to fresher, more fearing ground.
But when? It had been months since it began. Little things at first, almost comical at times. Pushing and jostling her in the corridors at school, not letting her pass. Chewing-gum on her seat in English. Katie had sat on it, and actually laughed back. Had that been her mistake? She had laughed when she should have fought.
But she wasn’t aggressive. Didn’t know how to be. She just wanted to be friends with everybody. Once, not so long ago, she had been everyone’s favourite. Katie Cassidy, always with a smile on her face and something funny to say. Katie Cassidy, who used to make everyone laugh.
Everyone, except Ivy Toner. Perhaps that was what made her notice Katie, single her out for her special kind of attention.
And usually by Ivy’s side were her two mates, Lindy Harkins and Michelle Thomson. But Katie didn’t fear them. They didn’t look her way unless Ivy was with them.
‘You shouldn’t show them that you’re afraid,’ her father had told her. ‘Stand up to them. That’s what these people don’t understand. You’d have no more trouble.’
It was all right for him. He didn’t have to go to school every day, alone. Never knowing when you were going to turn a corner and find them waiting for you.
They had trapped her in the girls’ toilet one day. No one else there, except Ivy and her cronies … and Katie. She remembered the day bitterly, with shame. Ivy, trying to force her head down the toilet until Katie admitted, tears streaming down her face, that Ivy was a princess. Princess Ivy … and that she, Katie, was her slave.
She had run, crying, to the teacher, when they’d finally let her go. Though they had sworn the worst sort of vengeance if she ever told anyone about the incident. And that had only made things worse.
Ivy had denied any such involvement, providing witnesses to prove she was somewhere else at the time. Nevertheless, her reputation as a bully was well known, and she was given a final warning to leave Katie alone.
Now she did, mostly, but only at school. She was clever enough to know that the school could do nothing about what happened outside its jurisdiction.
Now she lay in wait for Katie as she walked home, as
she left school. And now, to make matters even worse, Katie was a ‘grass’ to be despised. Even others in the school turned from her, as if she was the one who had done something wrong.
She had never been so unhappy or alone in all her life.
She stamped the ground angrily and cried out. ‘But I’m not even fourteen yet. It’s not fair!’
And it wasn’t. She didn’t know how to handle all this. her teachers, her parents, her friends, none of them really understood what she was going through. None of them could do anything to help her.
She was alone.
Here on the dump she could cry and scream and vent her anger. There was no one to hear her. Here on the dump, she was safe.
At least, she had been until now.
‘So this is where you’ve been getting to?’
Katie whirled around, wiping her tears with her sleeve as she did.
That voice chilled her. It was Ivy’s.
There she stood, her dumpy bulk outlined against the grey sky, her lank black hair hanging over the collar of her jacket. Behind her, as always, Lindy and Michelle.
‘Hidin’ frae us, are you?’
Katie’s throat went dry as she tried to speak. She felt clammy perspiration on her brow.
‘I wish I wasn’t so afraid,’ she thought. If Ivy was ever alone she would at least try to fight her, but Ivy was never alone.
‘You picked a nice quiet place anyway,’ Ivy said, and the words sent another chill through Katie. Her eyes darted around her. Isolated, and deserted. What was it she had thought only a moment ago?
Here on the dump there was no one to hear her.
The realization of how alone she was made her gasp. The dump was no longer the safe haven it had once been. It never would be again.
Why had she come here? Katie took one step backwards. Ivy sneered. She looked all around the dump, lifted her hands and shrugged.
‘There’s no’ anywhere you can hide here, hen.’
She took one menacing step towards her and Katie turned and ran.
‘Get her!’ Ivy screamed, and Lindy and Michelle began running too.
Katie darted one quick glance behind her. She’d never get away from them. There was nowhere to run, and when they caught her …
She let out a scream as she lost her footing, toppling down a bank of bin bags and rubbish and broken bits of furniture. She rolled over and over and finally landed at the bottom, sandwiched between the bags.
She could hear their voices, their footsteps thundering towards her. Any moment now, they would reach her. Any moment now, they would find her. She was done for.
Nothing could save her now.
Suddenly, a cardboard box nearby moved into life. All Katie could make out written on it were the words … Zan … Automatic Washing Machine. It was definitely moving.
Rats, thought Katie, there are rats here. As if Ivy wasn’t enough. There were other rats here too. Only she wasn’t so afraid of the four-legged kind.
And then, suddenly, out of the cardboard box,
she
emerged. As if by magic.
A girl, her hair almost the same colour as Katie’s but without her healthy sheen. This girl’s hair was matted, her face smudged with dirt. She was wearing a red shirt and trousers much too big for her … and a long overcoat. A man’s overcoat.
Katie gasped. She heard the footsteps stop in mid-stride.
‘Who the hell is that?’ Ivy’s voice.
‘Is there a problem here?’
The girl’s icy glance hadn’t taken Katie in, but she was sure she knew she was there. She stepped from the box as she spoke.
‘Buzz off,’ she said.
‘Ha!’ Ivy sneered. ‘You gonny make me?’
The girl shrugged. ‘If that’s what you want.’
Katie couldn’t make out her accent. It wasn’t Scottish, and yet it had a distinctive burr in it that couldn’t be anything else.
Who was this girl?
Ivy was still laughing. She wasn’t afraid, of course. She had Lindy and Michelle. One against three, the kind of odds Ivy liked.
Yet the girl didn’t look afraid either. Maybe she was too stupid to be afraid. She stepped forward, oozing menace.
‘Piss off.’
Katie sank deeper into her hole. If the worst came to the worst, she would have to step out and help this girl. And saying ‘Piss off’ to Ivy and her gang wasn’t going to help them when they were pleading for mercy.
‘You really are goin’ to try to take us?’
Lindy and Michelle were laughing too. The girl stopped her advance.
‘I won’t have to try too hard with you three wimps.’
She moved closer to them, out of Katie’s line of vision. Katie braced herself to stand up. To go to her aid. Yet she couldn’t move. Maybe this was her chance to run away, while they were busy mollecating the girl. She was probably as bad as they were anyway. She might have mugged her if they hadn’t been there. Why should she help? It wasn’t as if this girl was defending her.
She heard a thump and a groan. The battle had begun. A scream.
‘Let go!’
She couldn’t make out the voice. She wanted to peek over the top of the bin bags to see what was happening but she was too afraid. The least she could do, she decided, was to stay here and make sure the girl was all right when they were finished with her. Administer first aid, or even the kiss of life.
‘Come back here, you two!’
Ivy’s voice broke into her thoughts. Feet were pounding away. Two sets of them.
Lindy and Michelle!
‘Seems you’re on your own. It’s just you and me.’
There was another thump and another scream. A definite Ivy type scream. ‘You fight dirty.’
Ivy was accusing someone else of fighting dirty? What was happening over there?
‘I’ll get you another day … that’s a promise.’
And Ivy was running away. It was unbelievable.
The girl began to laugh. Her laughter echoed eerily around the darkening dump.
Katie held her breath, more afraid than ever now. If she could do that to Ivy … what was she going to do to Katie?
‘And you … hiding down there … don’t you come back here either!’ The voice was threatening.
Katie waited, expecting every second that she would be dragged over the bin bags and get the same treatment as Ivy. She waited, but nothing happened. Finally, taking a deep breath, Katie emerged from her hiding place.
The girl had gone. Katie looked all around. The dump was deserted again. And yet she had the strange feeling that somewhere, someone was watching her every move. She took one last look around. Then she ran.
At home that night she couldn’t stop thinking about the strange girl on the dump. Who was she? And had it
really happened at all? The whole incident didn’t seem real somehow.
It all came back to her in her dreams. Ivy and Lindy and Michelle, confronting her on the dump. She was alone. The dump was deserted. But the girl would come. Katie wasn’t afraid. She started to run, but she couldn’t move. Ivy was closing in on her. She was going to catch her, and suddenly she knew this time no girl would come to her rescue. Ivy racing nearer and nearer. Ivy at her heels. Ivy with her fingers gripping tight on her hair. Ivy had her!
Katie awoke in a cold sweat. That’s what would have happened if the girl hadn’t appeared.
And she hadn’t even thanked her!
‘Don’t you come back here either!’ the girl had said. But she would go back to the dump. On the way to school. She had to. She had to see if this girl was still there. And if she was … well, she was going to thank her now.
In the crisp early morning air, the dump looked different. The sun shone on the shiny black bin bags and made them look almost picturesque. Katie stood for a moment and looked around. There was no one here.
The girl had gone … if she’d ever been here in the first place. Katie was beginning to think she had imagined the whole thing.
This was silly. Useless. But she knew she had to try. She took a deep breath.
‘If you’re here …’ Her voice sounded peculiar, bellowing out into the silence. ‘The girl who helped me yesterday … I just wanted to say … Thank you.’
She waited for some kind of reaction. Nothing. Not a movement.
Oh well, at least she had tried. Katie turned to go, and just then, suddenly, from nowhere, came a voice, the voice from yesterday.
‘I told you not to come back!’
Katie almost fainted. Where had the voice come from? There was no one here. Not a soul. Then, from a cardboard box that looked as if it had been slung carelessly against a half demolished wall,
she
rose. She looked more than a little annoyed. What am I doing here? Katie thought. What is she going to do to
me
now? She’s probably every bit as bad as Ivy!
‘I … I … I …’ Katie could hardly get a word out. ‘I just wanted to thank you for yesterday.’
‘I was trying to have a lie in.’ The girl drew a hand
through her tousled hair. ‘Anyway. Thank me for what?’
Katie forced herself to take a step forward. ‘For yesterday. Remember? You helped me.’
Her answer was almost a snarl. ‘Helped you! I don’t help anybody. I got rid of them because this is my place!’ She gestured around the dump. As far as Katie was concerned she could have it. ‘I tried to get rid of you too if I remember right. But you’re kind of dumb, aren’t you?’