Samantha gave her a look. She wanted to say, Why don’t you look where you’re going next time? What she actually said was, ‘My head hurts.’
‘Well, you’re not gonna like it in there,’ said Mirela. ‘On account of how it stinks much worse than the stairs.’
Samantha could smell it already: solvent and fuel oil. Oh God. ‘Is this a -’ she began.
Mirela stepped aside. ‘Yep,’ she said. ‘A squat.’
The room was even darker than the stairwell and at first Samantha could only make out formless shapes a few shades darker than the general gloom. She felt despair, sorrow and emptiness wash over her before her eyes adjusted to reveal maybe six or seven kids. Some sat around, others were flat on their backs, and at least four of them held paper bags over their mouths, heaving in and out, as though the bags were external lungs. They were breathing in glue or petroclass="underline" the cheapest drugs in Romania. Grief clutched at her throat.
‘Over here.’
She could hear Birthday calling them, but it took another couple of seconds to spot him by a wall. She grabbed for Mirela’s hand and they crossed the room, stepping over mounds of clothing, discarded food containers, and a boy who had passed out with vomit on his chin.
When they reached Birthday, she realised that he stood next to a row of newspaper-covered windows.
‘You all right?’ he said.
Samantha held her hands out, the wounds red raw and weeping.
‘Poor baby superstar,’ he said, touching a finger, feather-light, to her bottom lip. She felt it still swelling.
‘Anyway, check it,’ he said. He turned and lifted a corner of one of the newspapers and a shaft of sunlight streamed in. Dust motes held a dance party in the glow from the window.
Samantha peered through the chink in the paper. She blinked in the daylight from the street. Tourists shopped and ate, Birthday’s crew begged and stole, and in the middle of them, flushed and furious, the Nordic jocks scanned the sidewalks, searching everywhere for them. She stepped aside to let Mirela have a look.
‘This place is charming, by the way,’ Mirela said quietly, as she elbowed past Birthday to reach the window. She peered through. ‘They’re gonna get themselves whiplash, looking around like that,’ she said.
She and Birthday laughed. Samantha smiled.
‘Ouch,’ she said, holding her jaw. ‘I hate you both.’
Samantha wanted to go home. She wanted to wash her hands and face and lie down. She also wanted to have a long talk with Lala – she didn’t know what was going on with the gypsy king, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t over. Most of all, she wanted to get Mirela out of here. Esmeralda would have a stroke if she knew her daughter was in a squat.
A dark-skinned, wiry boy, maybe a regular-sized nineyear-old, or a wizened eleven, moved from the shadows to join them at the window. Samantha didn’t recognise him and she hadn’t spotted him in the room before. She suddenly wondered how many other people were actually in here. The boy wore a man-sized black T-shirt and cut-off pants that didn’t reach his knobbly knees; he carried a paper bag in his hand.
‘What are you doing here, B?’ the boy said to Birthday Jones.
‘Hey, Fonso,’ said Birthday, giving the boy the super-fast, complicated handshake of the streets. ‘We’re just staying out of someone’s way. You?’ Birthday looked down pointedly at the paper bag.
‘Oh well, you know. This and that,’ said the boy.
‘Yeah, I can see. It looks like mostly that,’ said Birthday, making a swipe for the bag.
Birthday moved fast, but the kid was quicker. ‘Hey, B. Don’t go all parental on me, dude,’ he said, now safely an arm’s length from Birthday Jones. He reminded Samantha of the cats who mooched around the campsite every night. They purred and pranced for food, but come almost-just within touching distance and they were suddenly ten feet away again.
‘What do you do that crap for, anyway?’ said Birthday. ‘You don’t need it, man.’
The kid raised the bag to his face, inhaled and exhaled. ‘Maybe you don’t need it, but maybe you got less than me to forget about every day, you know?’ Fonso raised his bag again. ‘This here’s good for the memory, man. Makes it all go away.’
For the first time he looked over at Samantha and Mirela. ‘I see you got the Gaje Princess with you,’ he said. ‘I guess you got away from them ninja freaks, then?’
‘From who now?’ said Birthday.
Samantha’s heart ratcheted up another notch or two.
Fonso breathed into his bag again. His eyes were a glass doll’s. When he wasn’t speaking or breathing into the bag, his bottom jaw dropped open, as though he’d forgotten how to close his mouth. Samantha could barely feel him – he was far, far away. But how did he know who she was?
‘It’s just that this here’s prolly not a good place to hide from them,’ said Fonso. ‘On account of how they’ve already been here twice today that I know of.’
Birthday Jones whipped his eyes around the room.
To Samantha everything seemed the same as when they’d first entered. But suddenly Birthday reached up and tore a thick wad of newspaper from the closest window.
‘What’re you doing, man?’ said Fonso. ‘That’s not cool.’
Others moaned, injured by the reminder of reality that streamed into the room with the sunlight.
Birthday banged furiously at the lock on the window with the heel of his hand. It looked to Samantha as though her friend would break his arm before the mechanism budged. She reached down. Parallel to the skirting board a dull silver pipe was mostly hidden by a pile of rags. For some reason it had been one of the first things she’d become aware of after they entered the room. She picked it up.
‘Here, try this,’ she said, passing it to Birthday.
He did a double take, his eyes wild, panicked. He snatched the pole from her.
‘Stand back,’ he said.
Samantha grabbed Mirela by the arm and dragged her away from the window. Like a baseball bat, Birthday raised the pole up over his shoulder and swung. The window smashed on the first blow and the crash fractured the dazed stupor of the room. Dark shapes rose up from the floor around her. Samantha wondered how many people she had stepped on as she and Mirela had made their way across to the windows.
‘Sam, Mirela, get up here,’ yelled Birthday.
He used the pole to smash out the rest of the window, glass spraying everywhere. Then he picked up wads of filthy clothing from the floor around him and threw them out the window by the armful.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ said Mirela.
Samantha didn’t know either, but Birthday was obviously freaked out, so she quickly shovelled up another mound of rags. He snatched them from her and spread them over the windowsill. Then he stood back, waving Mirela forward.
‘Go!’ he said.
‘What! Are you crazy?’ she said. ‘We’re one floor up.’
‘There’s an awning,’ he said. ‘It’ll hold you. I’ve used it before. Just drop down. Now.’
Mirela faced him, hands on her hips. ‘Why can’t we use the stairs?’ she said.
From across the other side of the room, the doorway darkened. Samantha swung around. She could see only one new arrival to the squat, but she sensed there were others behind him. Then they locked eyes and the world suddenly shuddered by in blink-by-blink frames. She’d never seen or felt anyone like him.
She tried to focus through the gloom. At first glance, he appeared to be wearing a white vest over a long-sleeved, multicoloured shirt. With another blink, she realised that he wore only a singlet, and his arms were completely covered, shoulders to wrists, in blazing multicoloured tattoos. A strip of spiked black hair stood at attention along the crest of his otherwise shaved head, and a livid, puckered scar gouged its way through his bottom lip and down under his chin. Something dark and narrow protruded from behind his right shoulder, like a single, sheathed black wing.