“But you’d be in a shed load of trouble if they did…”
“But they won’t. It’ll be cool.” She cut off any further discussion by turning around suddenly and starting to walk back across the grass. “Come on!” she hissed.
I set off after her, with the others following me. I didn’t know whether to trust her or not, but I didn’t really have another option. We walked along quickly, in silence. She led us down back alleys and footpaths, between garden fences and alongside playing fields. Eventually, she stopped, and we all caught up with her.
“I’ll just go in and check what’s goin’ on. Wait here.” And she disappeared ’round a corner. The three of us left behind didn’t have anything to say to each other. They were pretty wary of me, and I was too tired to care.
“It’s OK.” She’d returned. “Dad’s still out and Mum’s glued to the telly. We’ll go in the back way.”
The other two looked at each other.
“Britney, you’re crazy. We’re going home.”
“You’re bailing on me?” They nodded. “Alright, suit yourselves. But listen. Don’t say nothing to nobody. I mean it – nobody.”
“Of course not.”
“See you tomorrow, then.”
“Yeah, see ya.” They trooped off down the street.
“Can you trust them?” I asked.
“’Course. They’re sound. Anyway, they know I’ll kill them if they don’t keep quiet. They wouldn’t dare. Come on.”
We went ’round the side of the house and in through the back door, then straight through the kitchen and upstairs. A little plaque on the bedroom door had a border of roses and the words BRITNEY’S ROOM in the middle. Underneath were more recent additions: a skull and crossbones, a big sign saying KEEP OUT. Inside, the walls were painted dark purple, and there were posters and pictures cut out from magazines all over them – Kurt Cobain, Foo Fighters, Gallows. The bed had loads of pillows on it and a sort of blanket, which was black and fluffy. It was all pretty cool, really. I thought of my last room, at Karen’s, my few bits and pieces all smashed up.
“You can sit on the bed, or the beanbag, whatever.” I perched awkwardly on the edge of the bed. Britney sat next to me.
“So,” said Britney. “I’m Britney and you’re…Jemma?”
“Jem,” I said.
“Right.” Now that she’d got me there, into her room, she didn’t look quite so tough. In fact, she was pretty nervous, making me think the front she’d shown out in the park was just that, a front. Underneath she was as worried as the rest of them. After about a decade of sitting in silence, she found some music to put on and then decided to fix some food, leaving me on my own.
I sat there and looked around. It was a proper girl’s room. As well as all the posters, there was a real dressing table with makeup and jewelry stands on it, and framed photos all over the place: pictures of family and pets. There were a couple of her with a boy, younger than her – in one of them he had thick, curly hair, in the other he was bald, but still with the same big grin on his face. So there was a brother somewhere, was there?
The central heating was stifling after a few days in the open. I was starting to sweat, and I was pretty sure I was smelling rank, too. I took off the green coat, but I was still uncomfortable. I stripped off my hoodie and dropped it on top of the coat on the floor. Lying in a forlorn heap on the rug, they looked disgusting. They were filthy and, looking down, so were my jeans and shoes. Even though Britney’s room wasn’t exactly tidy, I felt really out of place, like a turd on a carpet.
Britney came back into the room, with a big pizza on a plate and a bottle of Coke and a couple of glasses. The smell of the food made me feel hungry and sick at the same time. She held a plate toward me. “Just cheese and tomato, that alright?”
“Yeah, cheers.” I took a slice, not sure if I could actually eat or not. She was tucking in, looking at me and trying not to look at the same time. I nibbled a little bit off the end of the slice, chewed it slowly, and swallowed. It was fine, it settled in my stomach and stayed there, so I ate the rest of the slice and picked up another one. We sat there, eating and drinking. It was bizarre. It was like how you’d imagine teenage kids to be, sitting in someone’s bedroom eating pizza and drinking Coke. But we weren’t just hanging out, talking about boys and makeup. We were sitting there, both aware of the silence, trying to think of something to say.
In the back of my mind, there was still the fear that it could all be a trap. So I asked her, straight-out.
“Why are you doing this? Being nice to me?”
She put her pizza down on the plate. “I’ve never met a celebrity before. Well, not unless you count that one from Skins who switched on the Christmas lights in the town square a couple of years ago, and she was a bitch.”
“A celebrity?” I said. “What do you mean?”
“Well, maybe not a celebrity. Famous, anyway. The whole town’s talking about you. The whole country is. There’s all sorts of rumors about you on the Internet, pictures, too, sightings. Britain’s Most Wanted, that’s what you are.”
“I’m just a kid. I haven’t done anything.”
“Yeah, but they don’t know that, do they? Even if you didn’t do anything, you might have seen stuff. You could be a witness.” She took another bite of pizza. “Did you see anything?”
I thought back to that afternoon. It seemed like a year ago. Before we nicked those cars, before we walked for miles, before we slept out in the woods, before we found that barn…
“You alright? You’ve turned a right funny color.”
I guess the heat and the food and the tiredness had got to me, the room was starting to swim around.
“I feel a bit dizzy.”
Britney jumped up from the bed next to me and took my plate. “Here, lie down. You’ll be alright.”
I lay down, but that was worse. Before I could get up and make a run for the toilet, I was sick, pizza and Coke on her fluffy black cover. She was horrified, and to be honest, so was I. She’d been kinder to me than I had any right to expect, and now I’d wrecked her bedroom. I sat up straight.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I mumbled. God, no wonder I never got asked anywhere.
“It’s OK. I’ll get something to clean it up.” Britney shot out of the room, while I got up and opened a window to try and let the smell out. I leaned against the window frame, breathing in some cool night air. When Britney reappeared with a bucket and sponge, I took the sponge from her hand, dipped it in the bucket, and started trying to remove the mess from all that fake fur. It was a pretty hopeless job.
“Listen, why don’t you take a shower while I do this? Don’t worry about the noise, Mum’ll just think it’s me.” She showed me where the bathroom was and started the shower running.
“Wait a minute, I’ll get you some clean clothes.” She disappeared and came back with a little heap of clean, folded things, including a big thick towel. “Don’t take too long. Mum’s show ends in ten minutes.”
She disappeared again, and I locked the door behind her. The room was filling with steam. I wiped a hand towel over the mirror above the sink. There was someone in there looking back at me, but I didn’t recognize her. She was nearly bald, big rings under her eyes, looked about twenty, maybe twenty-five, vomit down the front of her shirt. I turned away and stripped off my dirty clothes, then stepped into the shower.
Soft, warm water rained down on me. I breathed in the steam, turned my face up into the flow. I reached blindly for the nearest bottle of shampoo and poured a handful, rubbing foam into my scalp and all over my body. As the lumps of froth slid down my skin and gathered in the bottom of the stall, I could feel myself getting cleaner. I scrubbed under my arms, between my legs, and I suddenly thought, I’m washing him away, and felt sad. For the last twenty-four hours, I’d been carrying the smell of Spider with me, on my skin, inside me. All that was spiraling down into the drain.