Shell

 

 

MY SHELL is in an abandoned swimming pool at the edge of a common, south of the river. From the outside, the building looks derelict and falling down, but apart from the mess of torn-up tiles in the empty pool itself, it’s pretty fine.

I’ve been living here for almost a year now. I sleep in the echoey shower room where a toilet in one of the cubicles still flushes. I blocked up the other toilets with stones so that the place doesn’t stink of the sewer. The water still works in one of the sinks too. Obviously the boiler doesn’t still work, so in winter I wrap newspaper around the pipes so the water won’t freeze inside them. Every shower I take with the panfuls of mostly icy water, I imagine I’m swimming in a tropical turquoise sea, the sun a fireball above me. It works. Mostly. My imagination is probably my best feature.

My bed is a large cardboard box—the sort that might have once carried a me-sized fridge—filled with blankets I’ve collected. The fleecy ones are the softest and my favourites. Dashiel gave them to me to keep warm last winter when I had no place to sleep as safe as this. I have no idea where he got them.

I’m not the only one who lives in the swimming pool. Milo, a vet, lives in one of the echoey rooms that used to be the old turkish baths. We keep an eye on each other, sort of. Other people come and go, but we have the best spaces. Everywhere else is too open and broken and cold, so we’re the only ones living here permanently.

When I found this place, I fixed a dozen locks to the heavy door to my shower room. I fixed Milo some locks on his door too, mostly so he would be happy to let me stay. He was here first, after all.

I’m safe here. Safe enough to sleep without the constant fear I’m going to be jumped. For a long time, that was all I wanted to be able to do—to sleep without being so desperately afraid all the time.

Safety and warmth. What else do people need? Maybe a little food, clean water. A friend? I don’t know. You’ve got to accept what you’ve got sometimes, I think. There is a limit, isn’t there? And for a little while, I was happy. With Dashiel, I was happy. I can hold on to that.

 

 

IN THE warm cocoon of my blanket bed late the next morning, I go over the notes I made last night: the two sharks I followed, the boy that went with one, Micky….

My heart beats faster.

He doesn’t look like a “Micky.” The name doesn’t immediately suit him. I’m not sure why I think that.

Trying to focus on something else, I draw a clear map of my route, marking in red the times I waited in each place and the times the sharks were there, but my mind keeps returning to the bus shelter like it’s an important clue. Which it’s not. It’s just hormones. Stupid, stupid hormones.

Frustrated with myself, I reread my description of Micky—again. My descriptions are supposed to be plain and objective, but it’s part list, part wishful thinking: long legs, blond, pretty, androgynous, too much makeup, American, high or hungry(?), injured, younger or older than me—not sure—and hopefully not good friends with Dieter.

I’ve got more important things to think about—like sharks, like Dashiel. I should be making plans and figuring stuff out. My list of sharks needs to be comprehensive, their movements documented. It’s the only way the police will take me seriously and look into this, because at the moment this case is going nowhere. No one knows Dashiel’s last name. No one knows if he had any relatives or where he was from. Those are not questions we ask one another out here, and what do the police care about some rent boy no one can formally identify?

They’re not even asking for witnesses on the streets anymore, and there hasn’t been an arrest. The murder wasn’t even in the papers or in the news—no one made a big deal about it. No one cares. No one but the people who don’t matter, like me. It’s like Dashiel never existed in the wider world, and I can’t live with that.

So I can’t write stupid notes and daydream about boys who make my heart beat faster. Boys I don’t know and who I’ll never know.

I put the pad down and picture Dashiel’s smiling face. He was always smiling. I find it hard to visualise him selling himself on the streets, mostly because I never saw him do that. When he took me with him, it was never on the nights he was working. I imagine Dashiel as the boy I watched last night. I imagine that nameless shark as his killer. I imagine him not wanting to die and crying in fear and pain when it happened. I go too far. I make it hurt so bad I just want to pull the covers over my head, hold my breath, and shut everything out forever.

I can’t do that again.

It didn’t make me feel any better. It didn’t help. It didn’t fix anything.

It didn’t make any of this right.

Shoving my blankets off, I force myself to get up. The only reason I think my body responds is because somehow I got up yesterday, and however hard it was, I know I can do it again.

Yesterday Milo sat outside my door and talked to me. Nonsense, mostly. But at one point he said he was worried because he hadn’t seen me in a while. He kept chattering on and on at me until I got up, banged on the door, and told him to go away. Before he went, he told me that what I needed to do was keep breathing, keep moving, keep eating. In that order. And I needed to find a way to let Dashiel go. Well, I’m doing the first three, but that last one isn’t ever going to happen.

 

 

THE MORNING sun fills the shower cubicles. With all my blankets draped around me, I watch the patterns of light as they move across the room. The tiles covering the walls are so blue I feel as though I’m underwater.

Standing on tiptoes, I open one of the high windows, shocked by the cold and how white the world is, how the snow covers everything and takes all the sharp edges away.

I let the cold fresh air circulate the room, drinking hot water from the kettle I can now boil on my camping stove—thanks to the half-empty gas canister I traded my coat for—to keep warm.

It doesn’t take long to fix Micky’s phone. With my blankets still tucked around my naked shoulders, I lay out my tools and spare phones on the cold white floor.

The screen I use isn’t a perfect fit. It’s from a replica, and the corners are a little sharper, but you can’t see the gaps unless you look very closely. I turn the phone on to check it works.

It’s still charged. Micky’s unlock code is 1212. It’s the second one I try. It’s so obvious it feels as though he wants people to unlock his phone and discover all his secrets.

When people hand over their phones for me to fix, I don’t always intend to be nosy, but sometimes if their unlock codes are easy to work out, a little poking around is too hard to resist.

I look to see if he has any photos. I can’t seem to help myself. But after I’ve scrolled through the fourth photo of Micky with the same sweet, genuinely happy smile as he hugs one friend after another at a party in what looks like a warehouse, and five more photos of Micky kissing different boys’ cheeks at the same party, I turn the phone off and tuck it away in the deep pocket of my hooded top. I won’t touch it again until I’m ready to get dressed and go out.

I don’t usually feel guilty about this sort of stuff. Dashiel always told me being hyperaware of the people you deal with, knowing their secrets, can keep you alive out here, but I feel as though I have failed myself. I feel as though I’ve broken Micky’s trust.