Micky. Hey Micky!

 

 

AN HOUR later I’m heading towards the river. The streets are emptying—the streetlights flickering off, plunging everything into blackness. Cars race by, sometimes with their headlights off, and the sound of their engines revving is like weird music distorted by the night air. Snow begins to fall in fat clumps, stark as the stars in the black sky. I brush snowflakes out of my hair and pull up the hood of my top as I keep walking. I traded my coat for a half-empty gas canister and a phone charger yesterday. Things I was desperate for, things I needed. Because lately I’ve been letting everything slide.

Yesterday was the first time I’d ventured outside in weeks. The first time I ate something that wasn’t cold and out of a can. The first time I realised that life goes on, even if you’re not a part of it.

Grief is shocking. It makes you feel so numb and cold, you could be made of ice. And when the ice breaks, it never gives you any warning.

“You want something, honey?” The girl’s silky voice is at odds with her bleak smile and shaking body.

She needs a coat more than I do.

Her hair is wet with snow, her skin as pale as the flakes. She steps towards me from under the railway arches, mistaking the pause in my steps for interest.

I glance around. There is no one else with her. Though a car with blacked-out windows sits farther back up the road, and I suspect her pimp is watching this exchange. I’m not sure that makes her any safer.

The wind blasts icily around us. This road runs parallel with the raised rail track and a train clatters overhead.

The girl cocks her head and peers at me, waiting for my response to her question.

I shake my head, keeping my face hidden inside my hood. What I want is my friend back, but that’s never going to happen.

My only purpose now is to try and find his killer. All I have are sharks to hunt. All I have are memories.

My notepad digs into my thigh as I shove my hands deeper into the pockets of my tracksuit and carry on.

 

 

IT’S HALF one before I find who I’m looking for—the shark Dashiel talked about the most. There are less people around now, and though there are some desperate kids sitting wet and shivering on the curbs, most of those who can afford to, and who have one, have gone home.

I see one of Dashiel’s friends, Donna, walking barefoot on the other side of the street. Dashiel told me some of the girls have a place together in a block of flats not far from here. She must be going home.

Her high heels swing from her hand as she grips her short coat tight around herself. Her dress is barely there, but it glitters blackly whenever a car passes and bathes her in its headlights.

Dashiel introduced us a few months ago, and though I’ve never said a word to her, she holds her hand up and waves. Even from the other side of the street, I can see the smile she gives me is a sad one.

My shark is circling. He didn’t even glance at Donna as she passed him. I think he only goes for boys.

I hang back a little and keep to the shadows. We’re near the river. It’s too open down here, and there aren’t many places to hide. If he thinks he’s being watched, I’m sure he’ll leave.

This is the shark Dashiel told me creeped him out more than the others. This guy hardly ever picks boys up, but he likes to talk to them about the things they’d be willing to do, how far they’ll go, if they know what breath play is, if they like a little pain.

He’s tall and thin. His coat is thigh-length, black I think, always done up. Today he wears a dark baseball cap. Beneath it, his hair is short and sparse and sticks to his head even when it’s not raining or snowing. His waxy skin and small pinprick eyes give him the eerie look of a mannequin or a doll. Dollman, I call him in my head. I don’t know how old he is. Thirty, forty, fifty? Sometimes I find ages hard to judge. Then again, sometimes I find lots of things hard to judge.

There are five or six boys and a girl huddled under a narrow Perspex bus shelter. The shark won’t approach them. He goes for the ones who are on their own, the ones who look desperate—too desperate to care. He walks past the group, ignoring the offers they call out.

“Hey, Loki,” a voice shouts from the bus shelter.

This shout isn’t for the shark. This one’s for me.

I spot Dieter’s sharp face and my heart sinks. I wish I’d kept to the shadows.

“Loki! Come here!” he yells.

My name isn’t Loki, but Dieter calls me that as though I am the punch line to a joke only he knows.

My shark heads into the darkness of the trees planted where the road becomes the embankment. I’d rather follow him than talk to Dieter, but something draws me, and I cross the road and stop in front of the bus shelter, my head down so no one can gawp impolitely at my face. Well, they probably gawp anyway, but at least I can’t see them do it if I’m staring at my cracked leather boots. They’re DMs and too big for me, but that just means I can wear three layers of socks and still get my feet in.

“You’re still fixing stuff, right, Loki?” Dieter asks, his long thin finger snaking its way into my field of vision.

I step back in case he tries to touch me with it. I’m not scared of him, even though he’s six foot one to my five-nine-in-my-boots. He’s as skinny as his stiletto heels, the shape of his bones clearly visible beneath his skin. He wears a blond curly wig that he likes to pretend is his real hair. Dieter tried to punch me once when I pointed out it wasn’t, and he threatened to push me in the river. I don’t look at him at all.

“Micky here crushed his phone under his arse when he fainted earlier. Micky, show him your phone.”

A boy I’d initially thought was a girl puts his hand on the Perspex side of the bus shelter and stands up. He pulls a phone out of the pocket of his tight white sequined shorts with some difficulty. There’s blood on his top, and his wrist is badly grazed. He looks completely spaced-out.

Micky’s face is fairly androgynous, and when I take in the overlong cut of his hair, the hot pants, and his smooth, shapely legs that go on forever, I know I’ve never seen anyone more beautiful. “Screen’s busted,” he says through chattering teeth.

He has an accent I can’t place. Australian? American, maybe? And even though he still has his hand on the Perspex, he sways.

Now he’s looking at me, there’s no way I can look at him full on, but I have enough details from my quick glance to put in my notepad later. His hair falls in soft waves over his ears, white blond, though I’m not sure it’s natural. His chin is verging on pointy, and he’s wearing so much makeup around his eyes, I can’t even tell what colour they are.

I’m pretty sure his lips are blue from cold, not makeup. He must be freezing dressed like he is. He’s wearing even less than the girl I saw earlier under the railway arches. At least the other boys here have trousers on and thicker tops. Micky looks like he belongs in a nightclub, dancing, and not out here on the street.

He makes my heart beat faster.

I blink that thought away quickly. Except it’s not a thought… it’s a fact.

I will not put that in my notepad, but I just know I’ll think it every time I look at my notes. Every time I picture his face.

Now I’m blushing.

Fuck. I wish I wasn’t having this reaction. Who your brain decides your heart will somersault for seems to be completely random.

I take the phone from his trembling hand, careful not to brush his fingers. It’s a battered old iPhone. The screen is completely fractured, but from the looks of it, it’s just superficial. A new screen should be all it needs. I can fix that. I do a mental check of the phones I have collected back at the swimming pool, and I probably have a screen that will fit.

I nod and pocket the phone. When I glance up, Micky is looking at me with a puzzled expression.

“Loki here’s our very own savant. That means retard, mostly, except in certain areas like electronics,” Dieter stage-whispers. “He can’t hold a conversation, but you can trust him,” he says to Micky. “I don’t think he knows how to fucking steal.”

The other boys crowded around him laugh. I haven’t looked close enough to see if I recognise any of them.

Please don’t, Dieter, I think miserably. It’s one thing to have your heart behaving erratically for someone who’s not even in the same realm as you, never mind the same league, and who’ll have forgotten you exist the moment you walk away, but it’s quite another to be ridiculed in front of them.

“How much?” Micky says to me. It pleases me that he ignores Dieter and doesn’t seem worried I’m going to steal his phone.

I shrug and shake my head. I barter mostly. I don’t really do money. We’ll trade what he thinks it’s worth.

Micky frowns. “When will it be ready?”

“Tomorrow,” I say mostly to the ground. “Bridge Street Café.”

“Okay.”

I turn away, desperate to get away from them. I’ve lost sight of my shark, but I’ll head down towards the embankment anyway. Away from Dieter and his little crowd.

“Wait. What time?” Micky calls.

American. His accent is definitely American.

“Noon,” I say, suddenly wishing I was a cowboy with a deep voice and a sweet twang in my accent like his.

 

 

I RUN for the tree line and only stop once I reach the river. Leaning over the wall of the embankment, I watch the way the dark water rolls in thick waves, as smooth and powerful as muscles. I look around, but there is no sign of my shark. I’m on my own.

Taking a run up, I jump onto the sloping embankment wall. I have no grace, but I’m as quick and light on my feet as a cat. Holding my arms out wide for balance, I walk along, listening to the gentle swoosh of the river, the clatter of a last train heading west, the endless growl of London traffic. It’s weird to think it, but it’s kind of peaceful, familiar. I know it’s not safe out here—nowhere is safe—but sometimes I think this is home. It’s all I’ve known for so long now.

For close on five minutes, the pain in my heart is survivable.