Num8ers - By Rachel Ward Page 0,42
color to black-and-white. Soon it would be just black. I had no idea what went on in the countryside at night — animals? people with guns out hunting? — and I didn’t want to find out. I was starting to lose it.
“Why haven’t we got a flashlight? Why?! Wasn’t it just a little bit stupid to come out here without a flashlight?”
“Are you calling me stupid? What about you? Look in the mirror, Jem. There’s two of us out here and neither of us brought a flashlight. It’s not just me!”
We were shouting in each other’s faces now. His spit sprayed my cheeks, went into my eyes, but I didn’t even care. I was so mad that he’d brought me here, put me in this situation.
“I can’t look in a fucking mirror, can I? There’s no fucking mirror! There’s no fucking anything!”
“Look, we’ve just got to deal with it, OK? I’ll try and find us a car tomorrow, but for tonight, we’re here, and that’s it.”
“I don’t wanna be here, don’t you understand, you moron? I don’t wanna be here. We don’t know what we’re doing! We haven’t got a clue!”
“For Christ’s sake! You are vexing me with your attitude.” He was right in my face, wagging a long finger in front of my eyes. “You can’t be a little girl out here! You’ve gotta grow up, man! What’s wrong with you? You were way harder back in London. Listen, I’m walking away from you before I do something or say something.” And he stalked off, shaking his head and flapping his hands about.
“Yeah, just fuck off!”
“You fuck off!” he shouted without turning ’round.
Of course, there was nowhere to go. We were stuck on a tiny island. I could still see him, an agitated cartoon, silhouetted against the inky sky. I wanted to scream, Don’t you fucking walk away from me! but I bit my lip, tried to calm myself down, tried to disentangle the angry thoughts in my head and think straight. Whichever way you looked at it, we were in trouble. I went back to our camp and lay down on my side, pulling the coat over me and the blanket ’round me.
If I closed my eyes, I saw bodies and bits: that old guy flying through the air, tattered pieces of bright blue on the ground, my mum. So I kept them open and stared at the odd pattern of branches, twigs, and leaves at ground level in front of my eyes. I watched a bug of some kind struggle up the stem of a plant and totter about at the end, the little leaves bending under its weight. My skin started to itch at the thought of bugs and spiders crawling all over me all night. God, the countryside was disgusting.
I heard Spider crunch back through the undergrowth, then plonk himself down nearby and rummage in the bags. He had obviously fetched out another blanket, because I could hear him shifting around where he sat, trying to get comfortable, then more rummaging, and the sound of something scraping, something metallic.
I thought, I’m not going to talk to him, he can do whatever the hell he likes, I don’t care, but every fiber of me was tuned in to him now, trying to figure out what he was up to. After a pause, there was the unmistakable flick of a lighter and a little glow in the gloom. A tiny crackle as his cigarette took, and then a long breath out and a gentle sigh of satisfaction.
I sat up, and his voice said, “I knew you weren’t asleep. Here, do you want a drag?” The glowing tip of the cigarette moved toward me as he held it out. I took it and inhaled. There was something reassuring about the smoke — it felt normal, familiar, comforting.
“Sweet,” I said, but I didn’t really mean the smoke, welcome though it was — it just felt good to reestablish a connection. The way I saw it, we couldn’t really afford to fall out.
We passed the cigarette between us for a while, not speaking much, just being in the moment. Then Spider said, “Do you think there are any black farmers?”
“I dunno, shouldn’t think so. Why?”
“I like this place. I like the feel of it under my feet. I like looking for miles.”
All this, based on one day, walking across some fields. “Come on, Spider, that’s not going to happen.”
“Why not? Do you need a diploma to be a farmer? Do