Num8ers - By Rachel Ward Page 0,47

don’t wanna be just another kid they’ve thrown away.” He smashed his hand down into the straw next to him. I’d heard him go off on tirades before, knew he could work himself up into a temper, but when I looked at him, his face was all squeezed tight like he was going to cry. He was angry, yeah, but he was scared, too. “I won’t do it, Jem. I’d rather fight and die.”

“Don’t say that, mate. Don’t ever say that.” And all the time I was thinking, Is that how it will happen? I put my hand on his back and moved it up and down, like he’d done to me before. He was so skinny, I could feel every bone in his knobbly spine through his clothes.

He sniffed hard, wiped his sleeve across his nose. Then he sat up and looked straight at me. “Is it today, Jem?”

I stared blankly at him, pretending I didn’t know what he was asking. “What?”

“Is today when it all ends for me? You know, don’t you? Are they going to find us? Are they going to put a bullet in me like they did to that guy on the Tube?”

I felt tears stinging my eyes. “Don’t ask me, Spider. You know I can’t tell you.”

“Oh, Christ,” he whispered. He put both hands up to his mouth, like he was praying. He was breathing hard, eyes flicking left and right, panic in them as clear as day. It crucified me to see him like that. I couldn’t let it go on, so I broke my rule.

“It’s not today,” I said quietly. “Spider, are you listening? It’s not today.”

He dropped his hands down and looked at me. His eyes were red-rimmed.

“Thank you,” he said, and he nodded. “I shouldn’t have asked, and I won’t ever ask you again. I promise.” He looked like a little boy, so serious and solemn.

I wanted to put my arms around him and tell him everything was going to be OK. I suddenly thought of Val, the woman who had comforted him like that when he was little, and the words she’d said to me — was it only two days ago? — came ringing back into my head. “Take good care of him, Jem. Keep him safe.” This was all getting to be too much — I was in way too deep.

Perched on some hay bales, we ate the rest of our stuff. I turned my back on the cows so they wouldn’t put me off eating. We shared the last bag of chips, and had a chocolate bar each, and a last swig of Coke. We ate slowly, trying to make a meal out of hardly anything. As we swallowed the last mouthfuls, we both knew. That was it. All gone. We were running out of options now. We’d have to take some action tomorrow. We had no alternative.

Once we’d eaten, there was nothing to do again. We talked a bit, but there wasn’t much to say. We both knew we were in trouble, both felt ground down by it. After a while, we crawled into Spider’s hay cave, spread out our blankets, and curled up a little way apart from each other.

It was dark now, really dark, but probably only about five o’clock. We lay there, talking a bit, listening to the cows. If you tried not to think about how revolting they were, how big, it was actually quite a mellow sound; you could hear them blowing air through their big hairy nostrils, moving around in the hay, munching away all the time. Every time one of them farted, Spider hooted with laughter. Easily pleased, some people.

I don’t know how long we lay there. I couldn’t get comfortable. The bales were quite hard underneath, and the spikes of hay were scratchy, even through the blanket. My skin, with two days’ grime, was itching like mad, and so was my scalp. I felt sticky, horrible.

“I could do with a bath, or even a shower,” I said, wriggling where I lay, trying to scratch my back against the hay underneath.

“Doesn’t bother me,” said Spider.

“Obviously,” I said.

“What do you mean?” he said.

“You stink, Spider. No offense, mate, but you do. And I stink, too, now, and I don’t wanna.”

While we’d been talking, a noise had been building up in the background. Now, in a pause, I could hear drumming on the tin roof. It was raining. The noise was incredible, water battering down on metal. I wriggled out