“Shut up, Spider,” I hissed.
He shook his head. “No, I won’t shut up. You knew about this. What the fuck’s going on, Jem?” He stood up straight and started walking toward me.
“Nothing. Shut up!”
He was close now, and went to grab me. I ducked away and started running. There were a lot of people on the bridge, and I had to weave my way between them. Spider was way faster than me, but he was big and awkward, and I could hear people shouting as he blundered through the crowd behind me. I made it to the other side and ran blindly through the streets. It didn’t take Spider long to catch me, and he got hold of my arm and spun me ’round to face him.
“How did you know that was going to happen, Jem?” We were both breathing hard.
“I didn’t. I didn’t know nothing.”
“No, Jem, you knew about that. You knew about that. What’s going on?”
I tried to wrestle away from him, but he was gripping hard. With his height and his strength and his smell he seemed to be all around me, I couldn’t get away. I tried to hit him, but he had both my arms now. I rammed my head forward, but he’d seen me coming and just held me farther away, still gripped in his vise. I couldn’t stand it. I kicked out and my foot slammed into his leg. He winced, but didn’t let go. “Nah, man, you’re gonna tell me what’s going on.”
People were staring at us. I stopped struggling and went limp in his arms. I don’t want to do this on my own anymore, I thought. I can’t do it on my own.
“OK,” I said, “but not here. Can we cut down to the canal?”
We walked up to the Edgware Road and soon found a way through to the back of the shops that led down to the canal. At last we were away from people. All the strength had gone from me, my legs were starting to go.
“I’ve gotta sit down,” I said weakly, and slumped onto a broken bench. One of the wooden slats was missing, felt like you were going to fall through it. Spider sat next to me.
“You’ve gone a funny color, man. Put your head between your knees or something.”
I leaned forward as a whooshing sound filled my ears. The space inside my head turned red, and then black.
“Whoa, steady, mate.” I could hear Spider’s voice from a long way away, the other end of a tunnel. When I opened my eyes everything was the wrong way ’round. Took me a while to realize I was lying down. The bench dug into me where I was nearly falling through the gap, but my head was on a pillow, rank-smelling, but soft: Spider’s hoodie. He was pacing up and down on the towpath, rocking his head, flipping his fingers, muttering under his breath.
“Hey,” I said, with hardly any sound at all. He stopped pacing and crouched down by me.
“You alright, man?” he said.
“Think so.”
He helped me to sit up slowly, then sat next to me. I was shivering. He grabbed his hoodie and held it out. “Here. Put this on.”
“Nah, I’m alright.” Didn’t want that foul-smelling thing on my clothes, my skin. I shivered again and he reached ’round behind me. I didn’t know what he was up to, was about to tell him to where to go, when I realized he’d draped the hoodie over my shoulders. Kind of wrapped me up. Made me think of my mum putting a blanket ’round us both on the sofa when the flat was so cold, cuddling up underneath it, one of her good days. Something was stabbing me in my eyes: pricking, stinging, hot. It spilled out and ran down my right cheek. Shit, I was crying. I don’t cry. I just don’t do that. I sniffed hard, wiped my face with the back of my hand.
“You gonna tell me now?”
I looked hard at the ground in front of me. Spider was the closest thing I’d ever had to a friend. Could I trust him? I took a deep breath.
“Yeah,” I said. And I told him.
CHAPTER TEN
There was silence between us – not an empty thing, a space full of thoughts and feelings, unspoken words and emotions. We sat there while the sounds of London in chaos played out half a mile away, sirens wailing, car horns going, helicopters circling. I felt stunned – still reeling from what had happened and shocked that I’d finally told someone. My body and my head were all over the place. I hadn’t looked at Spider all this time – I’d kept my eyes on the ground as the words came out of me. It was so unreal, like someone else was talking.
He’d been sitting, bent forward, leaning his elbows on his knees, listening. It was probably the stillest he’d been since I’d met him. Finally, he breathed out, a long breath through pursed lips.
“No way, man, no way.” He sounded confused, scared almost.
“It’s true, Spider. It’s all true. I knew something was going to happen because their numbers were all the same. And it did.”
“Ah, this is way too weird. You’re freaking me out.”
“I know. I’ve had to live with this for fifteen years.” Those stupid tears weren’t far away again.
He suddenly slapped his forehead.
“That old bloke, the one that was run over, you saw his number, didn’t you? That’s why you wanted to follow him.”
I nodded. There was silence again for a while.
“My nan knows about you, doesn’t she? You and her, you’re the same, aren’t you?” He shook his head. “All this time, I just thought she talked a load of bollocks, like, it was funny, really. But she knew there was something different about you. You’re a pair of witches! Shit!”
I sat up a bit, tried to breathe more evenly. There were a couple of ducks paddling along the canal, little brown things, oblivious. I watched them making steady progress upstream. How easy to be a bird or an animal, living from day to day, unaware that you’re alive, unaware that one day you’ll die.
Spider had got up, was pacing around again, up and down on the flat stones edging the canal. He was muttering under his breath – I couldn’t catch the words – just trying to get his head ’round what I’d said, I suppose. He scooped up a handful of gravel, started chucking it at the ducks. Must have hit one, because they suddenly took off, little brown wings going like the clappers.
He swiveled ’round. “Do you see everyone’s numbers?”
I looked back down at the ground. I knew what was coming next. “Yeah, if I see their eyes.”
“You know mine, then,” he said quietly. I didn’t say anything. “You know mine,” he said, more insistently.
“Yeah.”
“Shit, man, I dunno if I want to know or not.” He sank down to the ground, crouching, holding his head.
Don’t ask me, I thought. Never ask me that, Spider. “I won’t tell you,” I said quickly. “I couldn’t. It’s not right. I’ll never tell no one.”
“What d’you mean?” He was looking at me now. As our eyes met, that bloody number was there again. 12152010. I wanted to rip it out of my head, blank it out like I’d never seen it.
“It would do your head in if I told you, freak you out. It’s just not right.”
“What if someone hadn’t got long to go? If they knew, they’d have a chance to do stuff they’ve always wanted.”
I swallowed hard. “Yeah, but it’d be like living on Death Row, wouldn’t it? Each day, one step closer. No way, man. No one should have to live with that.” Except, of course, that we all do. We all know we’re one day closer to the end when we wake up in the morning. Just kid ourselves that it’s not happening.
Spider stood up, scratched his head, and kicked some more gravel into the water. “I need to think about this. You’ve done my head in today.” A siren started up from a street nearby. “Let’s get out of here.”
I handed his hoodie back to him, and we set off down the canal path. The gravel crunched under our feet as we walked past the graffiti-daubed walls lining the path. A lot of the buildings were derelict, but here and there some had been tarted up, turned into posh offices or restaurants or wine bars, shiny islands in a sea of grime. The sirens faded as we got farther away, and there was an odd quietness about the place, like everything had ground to a halt.