Needle, page 5
“I’m not saying sorry to no one,” I say.
“It’s up to you then.” The foster carer doesn’t say this, but I hear it in my head like the air said it instead.
“OK, Charlene,” she says. “I’m going to have a quick bath, unless you want to go first.”
“I’m fine,” I say. “I’ll have a shower later.” Then I ask, “Have you heard how Blake’s doing?”
She looks a bit surprised. Even in the shadows I can see her face soften. I want to laugh. She thinks that actually I am sorry. I’m not. I just need to know if there’s permanent damage to Blake’s hand. That’s gonna help decide what happens next.
“No news yet,” she says, “but I’ll let you know when I hear.”
I nod and smile. “Thank you,” I say.
She nods back and closes the door gently.
I stay there for a while looking out onto the street. My brain’s all muffled up. When I’m knitting, it’s like the stress is unwinding itself from inside my head. Now I can’t think properly.
I should slip myself between those clean covers and try to sleep. I need my energy for tomorrow, when I find out where I’m gonna live next. But who knows how long I’ll even stay there? This time next year I could be in prison.
I can see Blake in court right now. Nice, neat white boy. Hair combed all smooth. Smart suit like Roberto’s. Telling the judge how he gave up his bedroom for the poor foster girl. How he’s been working so hard at university. How, yes, he did mash up her knitting, but was it worth this? He holds up his hand. Now it hurts when he tries to write his essays. He can’t even open jars, or tie up his trainer laces – because he’s on his uni’s athletics team too. Of course he is.
And me? What are they gonna see when they look at me? Some folks always thought I was heading to prison. I bet they’d be happy to know they’re right.
I messaged Skye and Bash when I was in the car coming over here. I needed to tell someone what was going on. Then I ran out of battery. Phone’s charged now, but they haven’t answered. Bash’s mum is probably throwing a “Charlene’s Gone” party to celebrate the fact that I’m out of her daughter’s life.
I watch a man walking his dog on the other side of the street. The dog’s tiny. A squirrel’s gonna fight it and win. The dog hasn’t got no lead, so it runs ahead, then waits for him. The man’s on his phone and it’s like the dog just wants him to stop chatting and get the walk done. Suddenly the dog must have had enough and it barks and runs off. The man shoves his phone in his pocket and runs after it.
I rest my head against the window. I don’t know if the curtain’s damp from my sweat or the condensation on the glass. My brain’s still muffled. My thoughts feel like dropped stitches.
Click, click, click.
I try to imagine knitting, but it hurts. All I can see is the ruined T-rex blanket.
My phone buzzes. It’s a message from Skye asking me how I am. I see that Bash isn’t part of the chat no more. I call Skye. We don’t normally talk this way, but I want to hear the voice of someone I know. She’s at a barbecue at her sister’s and there’s people laughing around her. Skye says that if I was nearer, I could come over. Man, Skye, it wouldn’t be that easy for someone like me even if I was nearer. Social services don’t want us hanging out in strangers’ homes.
I tell her about Kandi. It’s the first time I’ve even mentioned I got a sister. It’s even the first time I’ve told her that my mum died. I usually don’t tell anyone that. It’s too much stress dealing with other people’s reactions. You see their faces change and they kind of look embarrassed and then they almost start edging away. But Skye’s good. She’s had all sorts of stuff happen in her family. One of her little cousins even went into foster care for a while until his mum stopped using drugs.
“Look at it this way, Chaz,” Skye says. “You can’t do nothing about what the police decide now, especially as that wasteman Blake’s gonna do his best to make sure you get locked up.”
My stomach hurts. Skye talking about me being locked up makes it feel more real.
“But it doesn’t mean that you can’t see your sister,” Skye says.
“Her dad said—” I start to say.
“And what?” Skye cuts me off. “Who cares what he says?”
Someone at the barbecue calls out that the chicken’s ready at last. Someone else shouts that they hope they don’t get food poisoning. There’s more laughing.
“Last time, Nana bit into a wing and it started bleeding,” Skye says. “Look, I got to go or there won’t be nothing left for me, but, man, do you have to do what Kandi’s dad says? He shouldn’t have split you and Kandi up. Go and see her, Chaz. You hear me?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Gonna meet up soon?” Skye asks.
“Yeah.”
And then there’s no Skye and no barbecue. It’s just me sitting here by myself next to the window. It’s as easy for Skye to tell me to go and see Kandi as it is for her to invite me to her sister’s barbecue. She doesn’t know about all the rules I’ve got to follow.
But, man, do I have to follow them?
I sit upright. I think of that little dog just now that barked and ran away when its owner wouldn’t behave properly. The dog decided that it had been patient long enough and was gonna do things its own way. Why can’t I?
I tried to follow the rules. I even listened to Annie and wrote those letters, but that didn’t get me nowhere. My stomach bubbles. In the school before last, a teacher told us it’s adrenalin. It squirts out from glands above our kidneys when we’re in danger. We can fight or we can run away. We can run away …
Who knows where they’re gonna take me tomorrow? At least I’m still in the same city as Kandi. I can get to her even if I don’t have nothing to take her now. All the hate I’ve got for Blake makes me feel like I’m plugged into the sun. There’s this power zapping inside me and I know it for sure. I have to go to Kandi.
I slide off the bed and open the bedroom door. I peer along the landing. The bathroom door is still shut and I can see light underneath it. The foster carer’s got her music playing in there too. If I’m gonna run for it … Am I gonna run for it? Yeah. I am. I have to do it now.
I go back into the bedroom, pick up my trainers, creep down the stairs and that’s it. I’m out the front door. I want to run, but a casual walk is better. Anyone looking out their window’s gonna remember a stressed girl sprinting down the street. I keep one foot in front of the other, slowly, slowly, and I’m nearly invisible.
Chapter 6
Getting across London when you haven’t got no money isn’t easy. I forgot to bring my travelcard. I creep in the back doors of the buses and throw a stink-eye at anyone who gives me a second glance. If the bus drivers notice, they don’t say nothing. They just want a quiet shift. Me, I want a quiet body. You know when you drop a Mento in a bottle of Diet Coke and it all fizzes up and explodes? That’s what it’s like inside me right now.
I hold on to the seats in front to try to make myself steady. When I have to change buses, I almost cross the road and go back the way I came. But what’s the point? When the foster carer finds out I’m missing, she’s gonna call the police. If Kandi’s dad sees me before I see Kandi, he’s gonna call the police. Whatever happens, the police are gonna get called anyway, so I might as well carry on.
I get off the last bus and stand on the street where my sister lives. I didn’t even have to look up the address. I’ve remembered it by heart. It’s a long street. I could take another bus right down to Kandi’s door, but any time soon my luck’s gonna run out with the drivers.
So what’s the plan, Chay Chay? You’ve come all this way to see your sister, so how are you gonna do it then?
It’s past ten at night now. Even if it was midday, I couldn’t just go and knock on that door. When Kandi’s dad let me and her FaceTime, it couldn’t be private. Every time I opened my mouth to say something to Kandi, I had to remember that her dad was sitting just out of sight. I always made sure I was knitting to keep me calm. Even so, last time I let out a swear word by mistake and that was the end of that. That man’s gonna be so happy when I’m locked away. There ain’t no video calls happening from prison.
I stop by an empty bus shelter. The light from it seems to shine through my head and make my thoughts glow. So what am I gonna say to Kandi? Well, thanks to Blake, I’m never gonna send the letter I wrote earlier. Because, serious, Kandi’s the only person I really need to say sorry to. We’d still be together if I could have held things down at school, didn’t run off my mouth, if I’d damn well said sorry to the teachers when I was asked. But, man, I just need to see Kandi full stop. It’s been so long.
I carry on walking. The road behind me is busy with traffic, but straight in front it’s just houses and pavement and street lights.
Kandi’s dad’s house is at the end of a terrace with an alleyway and a gate. There’s a street light by the front door. I just stay on the street thinking. Kandi’s room must be at the back. She told me once how she looked out the window and saw three cats staring each other out in the middle of the garden. She called them Bananas, McDonald’s and Skater Boi. Kandi said that if the cats came back, she’d try to take a picture of them for me so maybe I could knit them for her. I don’t know if they ever did.
The light’s on in the front room, but the curtains are drawn. I listen hard to see if there’s a TV going, but I can’t hear nothing. I also don’t want to wait here too long. That’s the secret. You have to be like Goldilocks’s porridge and get it just right. Move too fast and folks are gonna notice. Don’t move at all and folks are gonna notice. Always look like you know exactly where you’ve got to be and you know how to get there.
I walk towards the gate like I own it and push it. The gate opens. Man doesn’t lock his gate? This is London! You don’t make it easy for folks to come and thief your goods. Though Mum and me once lived in a ground-floor flat where the window frames were rotting away. The gap was so big we had to fill the space between the wood and the glass with a Pampers nappy – a clean one, of course. (It was good for catching the damp.) Anyone could have shoved the nappy away from outside, pushed their hand through the gap and opened the window. I suppose thieves reckoned that anyone who was blocking their window with a nappy didn’t have much to take.
I step through the gate and walk down the side path to the back garden. The security light flashes on. I hold my breath and suddenly I’m seeing all the garden at once. There’s a plastic table and chairs, pots of flowers and one of them oil-drum barbecues they have at Caribbean food stalls. I see that the bolt’s rusted open on the inside of the gate. Then the security light flashes off. A bus goes past on the road in front. Even the bus engine ain’t louder than my heart right now.
Nobody opens the back door or calls out of a window. Maybe the cats and the foxes set the light off all the time. I look up at the windows. One room has closed blinds. Another has curtains with a pale yellow glow leaking out between the edges. Kandi! That’s her! That’s the Barney the dinosaur night light I bought her when she was still little. Man, she’s almost at big school and she’s still got it.
Social workers and teachers and counsellors are always telling me that I’ve got choices. My choices right now are to turn around and leave my little sister’s garden, or to wake her up and plunge myself in a massive pit of crap. While my brain’s working this out, I’m already fumbling on the ground for a stone. Then I’m throwing it hard towards that yellow glow. It cracks against the glass and I almost regret this choice. The curtain sweeps aside and the window opens.
Kandi’s dad stares down at me. I haven’t got no flight and no fight neither. I seriously can’t move.
“Who’s down there?” he yells.
I realise that he can’t see me. I need to wait until he leaves the bedroom, then make a run for it. Please, body! Please! Help me get out of here!
I see the cat just as it jumps over the neighbour’s fence. It runs towards me and the security light flashes on. Me and the cat might as well be main stage at the O2.
“Charlene?” Kandi’s dad yells. “Is that you? What the hell are you doing here?”
Kandi’s dad is called Sheldon. I was once gonna knit a devil’s face that looked like his, but I ran out of wool.
Sheldon was sorry he couldn’t take me after Mum died. He said there was no room and he didn’t know me that well anyway. They were together for a couple of years, but he never lived with us.
Sheldon could have got to know me better if he wanted to. I could have told him how I got in trouble in Year 7 at school because I got in late after I went to have a word with Kandi’s teacher to make sure she had a place at breakfast club. Or how I helped Kandi with her reading and writing and took back her library books when she forgot. Or how me and her used to make up silly names for every cat we saw. All Sheldon had to do was ask me. I would have told him all that. He could have taken me too.
As I stand outside his house now, the window slams shut. I could run, but what’s the point? Sheldon’s seen me. Maybe, just maybe, he’ll understand. Maybe he’ll let me see my sister. If she’s sleeping, he doesn’t have to wake her up. Please let me see her!
The cat slinks away. The security light flashes off. I wait.
Kandi’s dad switches on the light in the kitchen and it spills out into the garden. I’ve still got time. I could run, but the back door opens and Sheldon’s standing there.
I wish he looked more like Kandi, then maybe I wouldn’t feel so angry with him. But Aunty Jasmine says that Kandi looks like Mum and I look like my dad. She’s right about Kandi. I’ve got no idea about me.
“What are you doing here?” Sheldon asks.
“Can’t you guess?” I say.
Sheldon shakes his head. “Nuh. You’re not seeing her.”
“Why not?” I ask.
These aren’t the words I want to say, but he’s not asking me the right questions. He’s not asking me nothing at all. Why doesn’t he just say, “Why do you want to see her, Charlene?” Or, “How did you get here, Charlene?” Or, “Are you OK?” Then maybe I could tell him that I want to say sorry to my sister. Instead, it’s like I’m plugged into the sun again and it’s burning its way through me.
Sheldon says, “Because it’s late.”
“Even if it was early, you wouldn’t let me,” I reply.
“No, Charlene, I wouldn’t and you know why.”
“No I don’t, Sheldon,” I say. “Why don’t you tell me?”
Sheldon’s eyes narrow. “I’m done with you, Charlene. I don’t want you anywhere near my girl.”
He goes to close the door, but I lunge forward and shove it open again. “She’s my sister!” I say.
“Get out of my house!” Sheldon shouts.
He pushes me and I fall back. The door slams shut and I can see him in the kitchen with his phone in his hand. I sit there feeling the cold stone of the path through my jeans. I know he’s jabbing three numbers: 9 – 9 – 9.
I stand up slowly and brush down my jeans. Kandi’s dad is talking on his phone, shooting looks through the window at me. I walk over to one of the flowerpots. It’s supposed to have flowers but whatever was in there has died. But it’s full of earth.
I pick the flowerpot up. It’s proper heavy, not one of those plastic things. I walk towards the kitchen window. Sheldon’s eyes open wide. He’s walking back towards the door, still talking on his phone. I lift the pot above my head. Flakes of earth fall off the side into my hair. I don’t care. I think of my sister upstairs in her room, so close to me. All Sheldon had to do was let me see her.
I heave the pot up over my head. All that hot-sun energy in my arms makes me move fast. The pot slams against the window and drops to the ground. Kandi’s dad stares at me through the cracked glass.
“Chay Chay?” The voice comes from the window above. “What are you doing?”
I look up. Kandi’s leaning out of her window. It’s not just her. She’s got two friends with her and one of them is crying so hard I can hear it in the garden.
Chapter 7
I run. I don’t know why and I don’t even know where I’m going. I’ve still got that energy. Man, fight or flight? I can do both at the same time now. I know the police are gonna come for me, but I don’t even try to hide. Then suddenly I’m so tired I can hardly stand.
I sit on a wall by a church and take out my phone. I try to call Skye, but she isn’t picking up. I start to tap out a message, but now I don’t know what to say. I scroll through my numbers. A for Annie. I delete her from my contacts. I delete Bash too. Down through all my contacts until I come to Kandi.
It’s her old number, I know, but I could never delete it. I need to see her name there.
Kandi … Man. I don’t think I’m ever gonna forget her looking down on me like that. I shamed her in front of her friends. I shamed myself. Her dad must be calling social services right now, yelling at them for not keeping me away from her. “Charlene’s violent! I was scared for my daughter’s safety!” Sheldon’s gonna show them the window and of course they’re gonna agree. “Yes, she is violent. We won’t let her near her sister ever again.”
I hear a car engine and see the police car driving towards me. It slows down and stops. The car door opens and two of them get out. They say hello. I don’t answer. I don’t feel like friendly conversation.
They’re both men, one mixed race, one white. The white one calls out my name. I don’t know if they expect me to say, “Yes,” like I’m in school registration. I still don’t say nothing.
They walk towards me and ask me if I’m all right. I push my phone back into my pocket and they both touch those belts they wear, the ones that have their stuff hanging from them. The feds say that they need to talk to me about some damage to a property and some threatening behaviour.
I stand up. They ask me to stay calm even though I’ve kept my mouth shut. They get closer and closer and I want them to stop. They keep coming and I still don’t move.
“It’s up to you then.” The foster carer doesn’t say this, but I hear it in my head like the air said it instead.
“OK, Charlene,” she says. “I’m going to have a quick bath, unless you want to go first.”
“I’m fine,” I say. “I’ll have a shower later.” Then I ask, “Have you heard how Blake’s doing?”
She looks a bit surprised. Even in the shadows I can see her face soften. I want to laugh. She thinks that actually I am sorry. I’m not. I just need to know if there’s permanent damage to Blake’s hand. That’s gonna help decide what happens next.
“No news yet,” she says, “but I’ll let you know when I hear.”
I nod and smile. “Thank you,” I say.
She nods back and closes the door gently.
I stay there for a while looking out onto the street. My brain’s all muffled up. When I’m knitting, it’s like the stress is unwinding itself from inside my head. Now I can’t think properly.
I should slip myself between those clean covers and try to sleep. I need my energy for tomorrow, when I find out where I’m gonna live next. But who knows how long I’ll even stay there? This time next year I could be in prison.
I can see Blake in court right now. Nice, neat white boy. Hair combed all smooth. Smart suit like Roberto’s. Telling the judge how he gave up his bedroom for the poor foster girl. How he’s been working so hard at university. How, yes, he did mash up her knitting, but was it worth this? He holds up his hand. Now it hurts when he tries to write his essays. He can’t even open jars, or tie up his trainer laces – because he’s on his uni’s athletics team too. Of course he is.
And me? What are they gonna see when they look at me? Some folks always thought I was heading to prison. I bet they’d be happy to know they’re right.
I messaged Skye and Bash when I was in the car coming over here. I needed to tell someone what was going on. Then I ran out of battery. Phone’s charged now, but they haven’t answered. Bash’s mum is probably throwing a “Charlene’s Gone” party to celebrate the fact that I’m out of her daughter’s life.
I watch a man walking his dog on the other side of the street. The dog’s tiny. A squirrel’s gonna fight it and win. The dog hasn’t got no lead, so it runs ahead, then waits for him. The man’s on his phone and it’s like the dog just wants him to stop chatting and get the walk done. Suddenly the dog must have had enough and it barks and runs off. The man shoves his phone in his pocket and runs after it.
I rest my head against the window. I don’t know if the curtain’s damp from my sweat or the condensation on the glass. My brain’s still muffled. My thoughts feel like dropped stitches.
Click, click, click.
I try to imagine knitting, but it hurts. All I can see is the ruined T-rex blanket.
My phone buzzes. It’s a message from Skye asking me how I am. I see that Bash isn’t part of the chat no more. I call Skye. We don’t normally talk this way, but I want to hear the voice of someone I know. She’s at a barbecue at her sister’s and there’s people laughing around her. Skye says that if I was nearer, I could come over. Man, Skye, it wouldn’t be that easy for someone like me even if I was nearer. Social services don’t want us hanging out in strangers’ homes.
I tell her about Kandi. It’s the first time I’ve even mentioned I got a sister. It’s even the first time I’ve told her that my mum died. I usually don’t tell anyone that. It’s too much stress dealing with other people’s reactions. You see their faces change and they kind of look embarrassed and then they almost start edging away. But Skye’s good. She’s had all sorts of stuff happen in her family. One of her little cousins even went into foster care for a while until his mum stopped using drugs.
“Look at it this way, Chaz,” Skye says. “You can’t do nothing about what the police decide now, especially as that wasteman Blake’s gonna do his best to make sure you get locked up.”
My stomach hurts. Skye talking about me being locked up makes it feel more real.
“But it doesn’t mean that you can’t see your sister,” Skye says.
“Her dad said—” I start to say.
“And what?” Skye cuts me off. “Who cares what he says?”
Someone at the barbecue calls out that the chicken’s ready at last. Someone else shouts that they hope they don’t get food poisoning. There’s more laughing.
“Last time, Nana bit into a wing and it started bleeding,” Skye says. “Look, I got to go or there won’t be nothing left for me, but, man, do you have to do what Kandi’s dad says? He shouldn’t have split you and Kandi up. Go and see her, Chaz. You hear me?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Gonna meet up soon?” Skye asks.
“Yeah.”
And then there’s no Skye and no barbecue. It’s just me sitting here by myself next to the window. It’s as easy for Skye to tell me to go and see Kandi as it is for her to invite me to her sister’s barbecue. She doesn’t know about all the rules I’ve got to follow.
But, man, do I have to follow them?
I sit upright. I think of that little dog just now that barked and ran away when its owner wouldn’t behave properly. The dog decided that it had been patient long enough and was gonna do things its own way. Why can’t I?
I tried to follow the rules. I even listened to Annie and wrote those letters, but that didn’t get me nowhere. My stomach bubbles. In the school before last, a teacher told us it’s adrenalin. It squirts out from glands above our kidneys when we’re in danger. We can fight or we can run away. We can run away …
Who knows where they’re gonna take me tomorrow? At least I’m still in the same city as Kandi. I can get to her even if I don’t have nothing to take her now. All the hate I’ve got for Blake makes me feel like I’m plugged into the sun. There’s this power zapping inside me and I know it for sure. I have to go to Kandi.
I slide off the bed and open the bedroom door. I peer along the landing. The bathroom door is still shut and I can see light underneath it. The foster carer’s got her music playing in there too. If I’m gonna run for it … Am I gonna run for it? Yeah. I am. I have to do it now.
I go back into the bedroom, pick up my trainers, creep down the stairs and that’s it. I’m out the front door. I want to run, but a casual walk is better. Anyone looking out their window’s gonna remember a stressed girl sprinting down the street. I keep one foot in front of the other, slowly, slowly, and I’m nearly invisible.
Chapter 6
Getting across London when you haven’t got no money isn’t easy. I forgot to bring my travelcard. I creep in the back doors of the buses and throw a stink-eye at anyone who gives me a second glance. If the bus drivers notice, they don’t say nothing. They just want a quiet shift. Me, I want a quiet body. You know when you drop a Mento in a bottle of Diet Coke and it all fizzes up and explodes? That’s what it’s like inside me right now.
I hold on to the seats in front to try to make myself steady. When I have to change buses, I almost cross the road and go back the way I came. But what’s the point? When the foster carer finds out I’m missing, she’s gonna call the police. If Kandi’s dad sees me before I see Kandi, he’s gonna call the police. Whatever happens, the police are gonna get called anyway, so I might as well carry on.
I get off the last bus and stand on the street where my sister lives. I didn’t even have to look up the address. I’ve remembered it by heart. It’s a long street. I could take another bus right down to Kandi’s door, but any time soon my luck’s gonna run out with the drivers.
So what’s the plan, Chay Chay? You’ve come all this way to see your sister, so how are you gonna do it then?
It’s past ten at night now. Even if it was midday, I couldn’t just go and knock on that door. When Kandi’s dad let me and her FaceTime, it couldn’t be private. Every time I opened my mouth to say something to Kandi, I had to remember that her dad was sitting just out of sight. I always made sure I was knitting to keep me calm. Even so, last time I let out a swear word by mistake and that was the end of that. That man’s gonna be so happy when I’m locked away. There ain’t no video calls happening from prison.
I stop by an empty bus shelter. The light from it seems to shine through my head and make my thoughts glow. So what am I gonna say to Kandi? Well, thanks to Blake, I’m never gonna send the letter I wrote earlier. Because, serious, Kandi’s the only person I really need to say sorry to. We’d still be together if I could have held things down at school, didn’t run off my mouth, if I’d damn well said sorry to the teachers when I was asked. But, man, I just need to see Kandi full stop. It’s been so long.
I carry on walking. The road behind me is busy with traffic, but straight in front it’s just houses and pavement and street lights.
Kandi’s dad’s house is at the end of a terrace with an alleyway and a gate. There’s a street light by the front door. I just stay on the street thinking. Kandi’s room must be at the back. She told me once how she looked out the window and saw three cats staring each other out in the middle of the garden. She called them Bananas, McDonald’s and Skater Boi. Kandi said that if the cats came back, she’d try to take a picture of them for me so maybe I could knit them for her. I don’t know if they ever did.
The light’s on in the front room, but the curtains are drawn. I listen hard to see if there’s a TV going, but I can’t hear nothing. I also don’t want to wait here too long. That’s the secret. You have to be like Goldilocks’s porridge and get it just right. Move too fast and folks are gonna notice. Don’t move at all and folks are gonna notice. Always look like you know exactly where you’ve got to be and you know how to get there.
I walk towards the gate like I own it and push it. The gate opens. Man doesn’t lock his gate? This is London! You don’t make it easy for folks to come and thief your goods. Though Mum and me once lived in a ground-floor flat where the window frames were rotting away. The gap was so big we had to fill the space between the wood and the glass with a Pampers nappy – a clean one, of course. (It was good for catching the damp.) Anyone could have shoved the nappy away from outside, pushed their hand through the gap and opened the window. I suppose thieves reckoned that anyone who was blocking their window with a nappy didn’t have much to take.
I step through the gate and walk down the side path to the back garden. The security light flashes on. I hold my breath and suddenly I’m seeing all the garden at once. There’s a plastic table and chairs, pots of flowers and one of them oil-drum barbecues they have at Caribbean food stalls. I see that the bolt’s rusted open on the inside of the gate. Then the security light flashes off. A bus goes past on the road in front. Even the bus engine ain’t louder than my heart right now.
Nobody opens the back door or calls out of a window. Maybe the cats and the foxes set the light off all the time. I look up at the windows. One room has closed blinds. Another has curtains with a pale yellow glow leaking out between the edges. Kandi! That’s her! That’s the Barney the dinosaur night light I bought her when she was still little. Man, she’s almost at big school and she’s still got it.
Social workers and teachers and counsellors are always telling me that I’ve got choices. My choices right now are to turn around and leave my little sister’s garden, or to wake her up and plunge myself in a massive pit of crap. While my brain’s working this out, I’m already fumbling on the ground for a stone. Then I’m throwing it hard towards that yellow glow. It cracks against the glass and I almost regret this choice. The curtain sweeps aside and the window opens.
Kandi’s dad stares down at me. I haven’t got no flight and no fight neither. I seriously can’t move.
“Who’s down there?” he yells.
I realise that he can’t see me. I need to wait until he leaves the bedroom, then make a run for it. Please, body! Please! Help me get out of here!
I see the cat just as it jumps over the neighbour’s fence. It runs towards me and the security light flashes on. Me and the cat might as well be main stage at the O2.
“Charlene?” Kandi’s dad yells. “Is that you? What the hell are you doing here?”
Kandi’s dad is called Sheldon. I was once gonna knit a devil’s face that looked like his, but I ran out of wool.
Sheldon was sorry he couldn’t take me after Mum died. He said there was no room and he didn’t know me that well anyway. They were together for a couple of years, but he never lived with us.
Sheldon could have got to know me better if he wanted to. I could have told him how I got in trouble in Year 7 at school because I got in late after I went to have a word with Kandi’s teacher to make sure she had a place at breakfast club. Or how I helped Kandi with her reading and writing and took back her library books when she forgot. Or how me and her used to make up silly names for every cat we saw. All Sheldon had to do was ask me. I would have told him all that. He could have taken me too.
As I stand outside his house now, the window slams shut. I could run, but what’s the point? Sheldon’s seen me. Maybe, just maybe, he’ll understand. Maybe he’ll let me see my sister. If she’s sleeping, he doesn’t have to wake her up. Please let me see her!
The cat slinks away. The security light flashes off. I wait.
Kandi’s dad switches on the light in the kitchen and it spills out into the garden. I’ve still got time. I could run, but the back door opens and Sheldon’s standing there.
I wish he looked more like Kandi, then maybe I wouldn’t feel so angry with him. But Aunty Jasmine says that Kandi looks like Mum and I look like my dad. She’s right about Kandi. I’ve got no idea about me.
“What are you doing here?” Sheldon asks.
“Can’t you guess?” I say.
Sheldon shakes his head. “Nuh. You’re not seeing her.”
“Why not?” I ask.
These aren’t the words I want to say, but he’s not asking me the right questions. He’s not asking me nothing at all. Why doesn’t he just say, “Why do you want to see her, Charlene?” Or, “How did you get here, Charlene?” Or, “Are you OK?” Then maybe I could tell him that I want to say sorry to my sister. Instead, it’s like I’m plugged into the sun again and it’s burning its way through me.
Sheldon says, “Because it’s late.”
“Even if it was early, you wouldn’t let me,” I reply.
“No, Charlene, I wouldn’t and you know why.”
“No I don’t, Sheldon,” I say. “Why don’t you tell me?”
Sheldon’s eyes narrow. “I’m done with you, Charlene. I don’t want you anywhere near my girl.”
He goes to close the door, but I lunge forward and shove it open again. “She’s my sister!” I say.
“Get out of my house!” Sheldon shouts.
He pushes me and I fall back. The door slams shut and I can see him in the kitchen with his phone in his hand. I sit there feeling the cold stone of the path through my jeans. I know he’s jabbing three numbers: 9 – 9 – 9.
I stand up slowly and brush down my jeans. Kandi’s dad is talking on his phone, shooting looks through the window at me. I walk over to one of the flowerpots. It’s supposed to have flowers but whatever was in there has died. But it’s full of earth.
I pick the flowerpot up. It’s proper heavy, not one of those plastic things. I walk towards the kitchen window. Sheldon’s eyes open wide. He’s walking back towards the door, still talking on his phone. I lift the pot above my head. Flakes of earth fall off the side into my hair. I don’t care. I think of my sister upstairs in her room, so close to me. All Sheldon had to do was let me see her.
I heave the pot up over my head. All that hot-sun energy in my arms makes me move fast. The pot slams against the window and drops to the ground. Kandi’s dad stares at me through the cracked glass.
“Chay Chay?” The voice comes from the window above. “What are you doing?”
I look up. Kandi’s leaning out of her window. It’s not just her. She’s got two friends with her and one of them is crying so hard I can hear it in the garden.
Chapter 7
I run. I don’t know why and I don’t even know where I’m going. I’ve still got that energy. Man, fight or flight? I can do both at the same time now. I know the police are gonna come for me, but I don’t even try to hide. Then suddenly I’m so tired I can hardly stand.
I sit on a wall by a church and take out my phone. I try to call Skye, but she isn’t picking up. I start to tap out a message, but now I don’t know what to say. I scroll through my numbers. A for Annie. I delete her from my contacts. I delete Bash too. Down through all my contacts until I come to Kandi.
It’s her old number, I know, but I could never delete it. I need to see her name there.
Kandi … Man. I don’t think I’m ever gonna forget her looking down on me like that. I shamed her in front of her friends. I shamed myself. Her dad must be calling social services right now, yelling at them for not keeping me away from her. “Charlene’s violent! I was scared for my daughter’s safety!” Sheldon’s gonna show them the window and of course they’re gonna agree. “Yes, she is violent. We won’t let her near her sister ever again.”
I hear a car engine and see the police car driving towards me. It slows down and stops. The car door opens and two of them get out. They say hello. I don’t answer. I don’t feel like friendly conversation.
They’re both men, one mixed race, one white. The white one calls out my name. I don’t know if they expect me to say, “Yes,” like I’m in school registration. I still don’t say nothing.
They walk towards me and ask me if I’m all right. I push my phone back into my pocket and they both touch those belts they wear, the ones that have their stuff hanging from them. The feds say that they need to talk to me about some damage to a property and some threatening behaviour.
I stand up. They ask me to stay calm even though I’ve kept my mouth shut. They get closer and closer and I want them to stop. They keep coming and I still don’t move.
