Num8ers - By Rachel Ward Page 0,43
you need a degree? Do you need to be white?”
“I dunno, I dunno. I guess you need money, though. Loads of money.”
“I wouldn’t have to buy a farm, just work on one. I don’t think running around for Baz or anyone like him is much of a career. I don’t wanna do that stuff. I need to find something else.” His voice was passionate in the dark. “I’ve got out now. We’ve got out. I don’t wanna go back. Wherever we end up, I want to start a new sort of life, not fall back into my old ways.”
What he was saying, it touched me. He was speaking from the heart.
“The Nutter was right, you know,” he continued.
“No way!”
“No, he was right. People like you and me, we’ve got the future all mapped out from the time we’re born. Dole queue, checkout, building site, street. No future at all. I don’t wanna be like that.”
“You going to go back to school, get your equivalency?” I asked, not believing it for a minute.
“Nah, think I’ve left it a bit late for that. But I want to do something. I want to be different. I don’t want to be no cliché black boy, a statistic.”
The knot that had been forming in my stomach as he spoke gave a lurch and tightened to a physical pain. It was breaking my heart to hear him talk about the future. How could I sit there and listen to him, to the boy with only a week left? What he was saying, it was right, it was inspirational. But it was way too late. If the numbers were right. If…
I knew I was on the edge of blabbing. I wanted to tell him everything — to share it, maybe work out a way to change it. But you can’t do that, can you? I could never tell someone their number, except bastards like McNulty, and he was probably too stupid to figure out what it meant. I swallowed hard, trying to get back in control of my emotions. Change the subject, fill the void with words.
“How come you ended up living with your nan? Do you mind me asking?”
“Nah, man. No big secret. My mum pissed off with some bloke when I was still a baby. Don’t even remember her. Don’t think I missed out on anything — I’ve always had Nan.”
“She’s cool, your nan.”
“Yeah. Daft old bitch.”
“Do you think you should call her? Let her know you’re alright?”
“Nah, it’s not safe to phone. They can trace them, you know. Nan’ll be alright. She’ll be cool.”
A picture of her standing by the side of the road as we left — was it only yesterday afternoon?—flashed into my head.
“I heard you tell Nan about your mum,” Spider said quietly. “I’m sorry and all that.”
“Not your fault.”
“I know, but…”
“Probably better off without her. She was…complicated.” I lapsed into silence. I was a liar, and I knew it. Whatever life I would have had with her, I would rather have had that — had some sort of home — than the gypsy life I’d had since she died. Nobody’s child.
We talked on and off for hours. Our voices sounded thin in the open air, but as long as we kept going, they fended off the unknown ghosts and monsters waiting out there, in the acres of dark stretching away in every direction. The gaps between conversations got bigger as we started to drift in and out of consciousness.
I guess I was pretty deep under when an almighty screech woke me with a start. I opened my eyes, but there was little difference: Open or closed, it was pitch-black.
“Did you hear that?” I whispered.
“You’d have to be dead not to hear that.”
Whatever it was went off again, a high-pitched screaming noise tearing into the night, so loud it felt like it was all around us, on us, in us. I was wide-awake, too scared to move. Spider shifted nearer, I could hear him squirming through the leaves and stuff on the ground, smell him getting closer.
“What do you think it is?” he said in a low voice, very near to my ear.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you believe in witches?”
“Shut up!” Yeah, right then I believed in witches. And ghosts and werewolves and all the other things that go bump in the night.
Another bloodcurdling screech, this time followed by a couple of loud hoots.
“It’s an owl, Jem. I’ve never heard one before. Noisy buggers, aren’t they? Where’s a stone or something?” He