Danish pastry from a paper bag. ‘Won’t turn your snout up at a bit of this, though, right?’ The girl tore a bit off and waved it at me.
Its icing glistened. ‘Okay, then.’
‘Here, Taylor! Here, doggy! Come! Good boy!’
I crawled over the bonnet towards her, on all fours. Not doggily, but carefully, in case she swatted me into the nettles. You never know with Dawn Madden. As she leant towards me I saw the bumplets of her nipples. No bra. My hand moved towards her.
‘Paws down! In your teeth, doggy!’
She fed me like that. Arrow to mouth.
Lemony icing, cinnamony dough, raisins sweet and sharp.
Dawn Madden ate too. I saw the cud pulp on her tongue. Closer now, on her crucifix I saw a skinny Jesus. Jesus’d be warmed by her body. Lucky guy. Pretty soon the Danish was all gone. Delicately, she spiked the cherry on the tip of her arrow. Delicately, I lifted it off with my teeth.
The sun went in.
‘Taylor!’ Dawn Madden peered at her arrow’s tip. Her voice went furious. ‘You stole my cherry!’
It stuck in my throat. ‘You…gave it me.’
‘You stole my fucking cherry and now you’ve got to pay for it!’
‘Dawn, you—’
‘Since when’ve you been allowed to call me Dawn?’
The same game, a different game, or no game?
She pricked my Adam’s apple with her arrow. Dawn Madden leaned in so close I could smell the sugar on her breath. ‘Do I look like I’m joking, Jason Taylor?’
That arrow was really sharp. I probably could’ve swatted it off before she could puncture my windpipe. Probably. But it wasn’t that simple. For one thing, I had a boner as big as a Dobermann.
‘You’ve got to pay for what you’ve taken. That’s the law.’
‘I don’t have any money.’
‘Then think hard, Taylor. How else can you pay me?’
‘I—’ One dimple. Tiny hairs velvet the groove above her lip. Imp’s nose. Petalled lips. Hook smile. A reflected pair of me looking out from her bad-doe eyes. ‘I…I’ve got a pack of fruit Polos in my pocket. But they’re all glued together. You’d have to smash them with a rock.’
A spell broke. The arrow fell from my throat.
Dawn Madden climbed back into the tractor’s driving seat, bored.
‘What?’
Her answer was this disgusted gaze like I’d turned into a pair of flares on a reject rack in Tewkesbury Market.
I wanted the arrow back, now. ‘What?’
‘If you’re not off our land by the time I count to twenty,’ Dawn Madden crumpled a stick of Wrigley’s Spearmint into her beautiful mouth, ‘I’ll tell my stepfather you groped me. If you’re not off by the time I count to thirty, I’ll tell him you,’ her tongue licked the word, ‘touched me up. Swear to God.’
‘But I never touched you!’
‘My stepfather keeps a shotgun above the kitchen dresser. He might mistake you for a wickle fwuffy wabbit, Taylor. One – two – three—’
The bridlepath wandered into this once-upon-a-time orchard. Brittle thistles and fluffy grass’d grown elbow high so you waded rather than walked. I was still thinking about Dawn Madden. I didn’t understand. She must sort of fancy me. She wouldn’t’ve given her only Danish pastry to just any kid who happened along. And I sure as hell fancied Dawn Madden. Fancying girls’s dangerous, though. Not dangerous, but not simple. It can be dangerous. Kids at school rip the piss out of you, at first. ‘Ooh, a baby’s on its way,’ they say, if they see you holding hands in the corridor. Boys who fancy the girl might pick a scrap with you to show her she’s going out with a squirt. Then, once you’re an official couple like Lee Biggs and Michelle Tirley, you’ve got to endure her friends writing both your initials plus ‘4 EVER’ in arrowed hearts all over their rough books. Teachers join in. When Mr Whitlock was doing hermaphroditic reproduction in worms last term, he called one worm ‘Worm Lee’ and the other ‘Worm Michelle’. Us boys thought it was a bit funny but the girls screamed with laughter like the TV audience on Happy Days. ’Cept for Michelle Tirley herself, who turned beetroot, hid her face in her hands and wept. Mr Whitlock took the piss out of her for that, too.
There’re gaps between me and Dawn Madden. Kingfisher Meadows’s the poshest estate in Black Swan Green, most kids reckon. Her stepfather’s farmhouse is the opposite of posh. I’m in 2KM, the top class at school. She’s in 2LP, second from bottom. These gaps aren’t easy to ignore. There are rules.