If only tonight we could sleep

 

 

IT’S DARK, but it doesn’t feel late when I wake. I hunt for my phone to tell me the time but I realise I gave it to Micky, and with a sinking heart, I remember what I’ve done. I’ve broken his phone. Squeezing my eyes shut tight, I roll onto my back. Somehow I’m going to have to get another phone for him. It’s going to have to be a decent one. His was decent. And it needs to be reliable too. Working the streets is dangerous.

I don’t want to think about him out there. I don’t want to get too attached. What would be the point?

Micky is not my friend like Dashiel was. We hardly know one another. But I can’t stop the way thoughts of him keep crashing into my head. There is no reason for me to think about him. I’ve fixed other people’s phones before. There’s something about him, though, something that makes me hope he’s warm and safe. I don’t like imagining him glittering brightly on the dark streets. It hurts when I think about him out there.

I draw my eyebrows together. If Dashiel was here, I probably wouldn’t be thinking about Micky at all. Dashiel was my friend. I loved him.

But Dashiel never made my heart beat faster.

I’m probably just pathetically lonely. I probably just need a friend. But I don’t have one anymore.

 

 

FOR HOURS I lie staring out the window at the dark, revolving sky. It’s not worth leaving before eleven. The busiest hours on the streets are the ones before midnight, but the sharks I’m looking for wait until those hours are gone. There would be no point in hanging around, freezing my bones.

Deep inside the building, Milo dreams his bad dreams. His moans sound a little like the wind as it rushes through the big empty swimming pool, but they’re sadder. Much, much sadder. Sometimes he shouts out, but the words always sound as though they’re in another language.

The kids who hang out in the park whisper that this place is haunted. I think I might like to meet some ghosts. The dead aren’t scary. It’s the living who do the terrifying things.

 

 

TONIGHT I don’t head towards the river. I don’t want to risk seeing Micky or Dieter because I’m not sure what I’m going to say if they ask about Micky’s phone. Instead I head down black street after black street towards the parks. The councils turn off nonessential lighting after midnight, and only the main thoroughfares are lit.

The rain is freezing, and by the time I reach the park, I’m soaked and my face is raw. Hail would be better, or even snow. Night-time rain is made of darkness, and out here the darkness clings to you.

Standing under the stone archway covering the back door to a posh block of flats opposite the park, I scan the street and unwrap my pad out of the plastic bag that’s keeping it dry.

Across the road a couple of girls crouch close together beneath one of the massive trees, shiny skirts tugged down almost over their knees. A boy wanders up and down the pavement, head down, looking like he doesn’t care that he’s soaked to the skin. He’s not dressed like the boys near the river dress. He doesn’t glitter. His clothes are too big for him, as though he’s just picked whatever they had at the clothing bank. I can see his shoes slipping off his feet even from here.

My gaze is glued to him as he wanders back and forth.

The longer I stare at him, the more I think maybe he doesn’t care about anything.

No cars stop. No one wanders past. There are no sharks.

 

 

“HEY, DASHIEL’S friend, right?”

My head slams against the door behind me as I jump backwards in shock.

A girl with a see-through umbrella is standing on my left. I didn’t hear her approach.

Wincing from the pain in my head, I stare at the wet ground and wrap my pad back up in the plastic bag.

“Sorry… I didn’t mean to scare you,” she says.

I recognise her, but I glance again to make sure.

Donna.

“S’okay,” I say, winding the plastic round and round and round my pad. I can make this take a long time. I wonder what she wants.

“Dashiel said you weren’t much of a talker. This is for you.” She holds out a grease-stained paper bag.

I put my pad in my pocket and take the bag from her. It’s warm. My mouth waters without my even thinking about it or looking inside. It smells really good, like a Cornish pasty or something. I glance up, swallow, my heart in my throat. “Thank you.” Sometimes words feel alien in my mouth but saying thank you is important.

“You’ve been standing here a while and you look soaked through. You got some place to sleep tonight?”

I nod.

“A dry someplace?” She sounds worried.

I don’t know why she’d worry about me, though. “Yeah.”

“Okay, good.” Her breath freezes in the air as she speaks, and she stamps her feet trying to keep warm.

I’ve given up on keeping warm tonight. I’ll just remain hunched over, holding myself in tight.

Donna’s coat hardly covers her tiny dress, and the coat zip is broken. I don’t know how to fix zips. I wish I did. I want to fix everything.

The smell of the pasty is driving me crazy. I wonder if she’d mind if I started eating it. She probably doesn’t want to watch me eat, though. It’d feel kind of awkward to have her watch me eat.

“Listen, if you ever want to talk… or not talk… I’m around most nights, either here or down towards the river…. I miss him too.”

I glance at her face.

She doesn’t wear as much makeup as some of the girls—she looks older than a lot of them too—but still her lips are redder than red, her eyes outlined with black and maybe a little blue. Her dark hair is cut boyishly short, but she doesn’t look like a boy. She reminds me of a poster of Liza Minnelli in Cabaret that I once saw pasted across the window of a closed-down shop in Waterloo.

The wind gusts around us, sending cans and bits of paper spiraling along the pavement. Donna tucks her hands in the sleeves of her coat and shivers. She looks tired and cold. If she lives where I think she does, she has a bit of a trek home from here.

“I’ll see you around, then?” she says.

I nod and watch her walk away.

When she’s gone, I look back across the road. The girls beneath the tree have gone too.

The boy is sitting on the curb, his head resting on his knees. He’s tired. The kind of tiredness that’s stored in every muscle of your body, in every breath you take of the freezing night air. I know tiredness like that. When you’re tired of everything, tired enough to want to make it all stop. I stare at him, wondering if someone once stared at me this way.

Then I look up. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end as if some force is passing over me.

A man in a dark coat is walking along the pavement towards him.

Just the sight of the man sends another electric shiver up my spine. I have a bad feeling, but I can’t work out why.

It could be some guy walking home after work or a night out. Of course it could. And if it’s a punter swimming these stretches, then that’s probably what the boy’s been waiting for. The boy looks like he’s been waiting to be picked up for the past hour at least.

It must be loneliness that makes me want to do crazy things. Really crazy things. I can think of no other explanation.

I take a quick bite of the pasty as I hurry across the road. It’s almost hot, and it tastes so good, it almost cancels out how cold I am. I fold the top of the bag over to keep it warm. Hardly any cars are on the road now, just the occasional taxi or sports car ignoring the speed limits.

The bad feeling I have increases as I get closer to the boy. I don’t know why, because I can’t even see the man walking towards him properly, but I’m scared the guy is a shark. He walks with careful, measured steps, and even though the rain on my eyelashes makes the wet ground sparkle and everything become indistinct, I get the impression that the guy is smiling.

I reach the other side of the road. The boy tilts his head. He hasn’t noticed the man walking towards him the other way. Instead he watches me. He looks wary, but wary is good—if he didn’t care anymore, he wouldn’t last long out here.

I hold his gaze and push my hair back, making myself hold eye contact longer than I usually do for anyone—just a few seconds, just to make it seem that we have some connection, anything that will put the man off if he’s going to approach. It feels weird holding eye contact for this long. I don’t like it.

As I get closer, I can see the boy’s eyes are a light colour, maybe green or blue. He wears no makeup to hide them, and his skin is clear under the streetlight, as fresh as water. He looks young. Really young.

I keep looking at the boy as I sit down next to him on the curb. Not too close—I don’t want to scare him away. There’s about half a meter of pavement between us.

The man is only a few meters away. When his footsteps falter, I know without a doubt he was making an approach. I don’t look at him. I pretend I haven’t noticed him, that I haven’t taken hurried notes in my head about his description. Notes I need to write down quickly, before they become too jumbled up.

The man keeps walking. He passes behind us. I turn my head to watch him walk away. Maybe he was just a fish. Maybe….

The only sharks I’ve been hunting so far are the ones Dashiel told me about, but maybe it’s time I found one of my own.

The boy follows my gaze, and it’s the strangest thing—when he catches sight of the guy walking away, I see him shiver. He shivers like I did, like he can’t help it.

I take a deep breath. The cold makes me cough it back out.

The boy returns to sitting with his head between his knees as if he’s pretending I’m not there.

I put the paper bag in my lap and take out my pad to scribble down my description of the shark/not-shark. When I’ve done that, I put the pad away and look around, not really sure what it is I’m supposed to do now. I don’t usually approach people. I don’t usually have a reason to. Should I get up and go away?

I open the paper bag and take another bite of the pasty. The boy turns his head, watches me from beneath his arms, his eyes fixing on the food. He’s hungry.

I don’t even think about it—I break the pasty in half and hold the half still in the bag out to him.

His expression is a mixture of too many things. Confusion mostly, I think. Maybe it’s my face that confuses him, but he doesn’t seem disgusted or horrified or shocked, or even particularly curious like some people are, especially kids—and I don’t mind that sort of curiosity anymore, it’s not malicious. It’s just wonder at all the differences in the world, and I am different. Maybe this kid can tell I’m not a punter and wonders what I want. I don’t know.

He chews his lip, then reaches out a trembling hand to take the bag. Drawing his eyebrows together, he stares at the pasty. Rain drips from his soaking coat sleeve and onto the road. I glance at my own soaking sleeve. Then the boy looks at me again.

“It’ll get cold,” I say quietly, gesturing that he eat it, then swallowing the rest of the half I have in my hand in a single bite.

I watch the rain drip off my fingertips as the boy wolfs the pasty down with muffled grunts and gasps. It takes about three seconds.

I remember being so hungry that I didn’t want to chew food, I just wanted to swallow it down whole. I remember being so cold and wet that I’d go beyond shivering and all my body did was ache. I remember not wanting to care about anything, not wanting to have to keep going. I remember being so tired.

I remember a boy with glittering eyeshadow sitting next to me on the steps of some derelict church and not saying a word until I looked at him properly. Dashiel. I remember how he held out his hand and I never took it, but I followed him anyway, drawn to him because he was full of light and he walked like he could dance on air.

This boy wipes his mouth with his wet sleeve and says something, but it’s not English. I shrug in response. I don’t know what language he’s speaking. It doesn’t matter.

I have another crazy idea.

Making sure no one else is watching us, I point across the road to the doorway I was standing in a few minutes ago. It’s a little sheltered from the rain, and although the shallow step will still be cold and wet, at least the bitter wind won’t blow through us like we’re ghosts, and anyone who passes by won’t see us and stare.

I get up and gesture for him to follow me. Deep down in my heart, I don’t really expect him to. He probably needs to be out here; he probably needs the money. He was waiting to be picked up, after all.

I feel so light and happy when he stands up and comes after me.

It’s probably a strange thing to do, but I just want to sit with him for a little while. The sharks I’m supposed to be hunting out there can wait. For a moment my wandering the streets for them doesn’t seem as important as sitting in a doorway with this tired and hungry kid.

A little while turns into a long while. He is just a kid. It’s a horrible night, and I don’t think he has anywhere else to go.

We sit side by side, arms folded around our knees. I watch the rain, feeling too numb with cold to even shiver now. Sometimes I like the rain—but not tonight.

Sitting out here like this is likely to make me sick. It’s likely to make anyone sick. I hate to think how long this kid has been out on the street. One night, two nights, more nights than he can remember?

I don’t realise what he’s doing at first, but every so often he shuffles his hips and his feet a tiny bit, and ends up closer to me. He keeps his head bowed, and I pretend not to notice. A weird sort of tension has weighed my limbs down—it’s as though I’m a statue. I can’t ever remember anyone ever wanting to be closer to me. I can’t even remember hugging Dashiel, except perhaps once, in the beginning.

When the boy’s head touches my shoulder, I have to tell myself to keep breathing. I’m not used to being touched. I can feel his warmth even through his wet coat and my hooded jumper. Even out in this frozen night, he is still so warm.

Warm and shivering and alive. Not being used in some alleyway or car park by some creepy guy with a permanent smile. Not being devoured by a shark. He’s here. With me. A complete stranger.

Yet somehow we’re not strangers anymore. We’re two scared souls colliding in the dark. Some broken impulse makes me search for his hand. I scrabble clumsily, brushing my fingers against his sleeve. As soon as he realises what I’m doing, he pushes his hand out and thrusts it eagerly into mine. Frozen fingers gripping frozen fingers.

My throat feels tight as if I’m full of tears, but I don’t even know what I want to cry for.

I stare out into the night at the rain, grateful when it finally stops.

 

 

AN OLD church clock tolls four, a brief steady heartbeat of sound.

All around us London is paused, like a traffic light on amber, halfway between night and day.

This is the crossover. This is the time just before night workers begin to head home and day workers begin to wake. I’ve not been out in the crossover for so long. Sometimes in summer, when dawn lightens the sky, for a minute, maybe two, London becomes a ghost city—all weirdly silent yet full of light. Dashiel told me he’d seen film crews set up on one of the bridges at 4:00 a.m. one summer. It was for a film where London was to appear deserted after a zombie apocalypse. I forget the name of the film now.

This amber silence used to be my favourite time of day, until I was out here without choice and I couldn’t escape it. I suspect the kid next to me hates it.

His breathing is deep and slow, his head heavy and making my shoulder ache—I think he’s sleeping. I should wake him so we can be at Diana’s when she opens.

A few hours ago, I was going to draw him a map. But now my responsibility for him feels as warm and weighted as his body resting against my side, as tangled together as our fingers.

Last summer Diana told me about a kid she saw curled up on the pavement outside a shop on Oxford Street, being trampled by shoppers, who didn’t seem to notice, or care. She took him back to her restaurant with her and called social services. She got him a place to stay, off the streets, somewhere safe. I don’t know how to do that. The best I can do is take this kid to her.

Gently I prize our cold fingers apart and touch the kid’s shoulder. He’s sleeping pretty deeply. I’m kind of touched that he felt safe enough to do that, or maybe he was exhausted and couldn’t help it. I’ve never trusted anyone enough to fall asleep with them. Not that there ever was anyone. I only saw Dashiel out here on the streets, never at the swimming pool.

As gently as I can, I push the boy’s head off my shoulder to wake him.

When he blinks, I see the panic, the “where the hell am I and who the hell are you” panic. It’s to be expected, but as quick as breathing, the world comes together for him. He figures it out, and he smiles. He’s sweet-looking, with a lot of freckles and a wonky scar on his nose. I didn’t look at him so closely last night. I smile back. He screws his face up and yawns sleepily, all neat off-white teeth and pink tongue, and fuck, he looks so young. Even if the guy wasn’t a shark, I’m really glad this boy wasn’t picked up last night.

 

 

MY BODY is stiff and achy, and we are both so completely soaked and weighed down by our clothes that it seems to take an age to get to Diana’s restaurant.

The restaurant is in a tiny narrow building squeezed in between two other much larger, taller ones a couple of streets away from the river. A small green-and-yellow sign in the shape of a palm tree hangs in the window.

I peer in through the letterbox, but the place is dark and lifeless.

Although she doesn’t open until around 9:00 a.m., Diana often comes in early to prepare food. I hoped she would be here. I’m exhausted and irritable, and I want to be out of these freezing wet clothes. I want to be in my nest, all warm and sleeping.

The boy must feel that way too.

There’s an old wooden bench across the pavement. I gesture that the boy should sit down, and I pull out my pad and write a few words. I’m not sure if what I’m writing is for him or Diana. But perhaps he’ll give it to her, I don’t know. What I’m really hoping is she takes one look at him and sees he’s too young to be out there on his own. I put the note in his hands and point to the restaurant.

He frowns at the note.

When his hand reaches for mine, I pull away. It’s just a reflex. I’m startled, I don’t mean anything by it. The look on his face makes me hate my stupid reflexes more than I hated the rain last night.

Tentatively I reach out and touch my fingers against his. He smiles.

A part of me wants to stay with him until Diana comes. A big part, maybe, but I can’t. I can’t let myself. This already hurts. I don’t know why, but it does.

I didn’t mean to get close to this kid, but for a few hours I’ve been closer to him than I’ve been to anyone for weeks. It’s stupid and pointless. This kid needs to be off the streets. He doesn’t need anything but that. And I need to be back in my shell, wrapped in my blankets, asleep.

My legs are shaky when I get up.

“Dytryk,” he says quietly. Ditrik.

He hasn’t said a word since last night, but now he splays his palm out over his heart.

“Dytryk,” he says again. He says other things I don’t understand.

I sit back down on the bench. I have to go, I think. I should go.

But I don’t.

 

 

DAWN BLAZES fiercely across the rooftops. My eyes are open but I’m a long way off. Dytryk leans against my side. I suspect he’s sleeping again. Every so often he shifts and makes small sighing noises that despite everything make me want to smile.

I think of Micky, and I like the way my heart beats faster. I wish I didn’t. I have to think of him in abstracts—legs, eyes, smile, teeth, hair—otherwise my stupid hormones start to make everything a lot more complicated. Everything seems so complicated anyway.

Freak.

My eyes snap open.

Three boys with dark smiles shift lazily from foot to foot in front of me, their faces mostly shadowed by hoods.

My heart lurches.

I must have dozed off. I never usually doze off, though. I never sleep anywhere but in my nest. It’s not safe. When you sleep you become an easy target. The proof is standing right in front of me.

My chest tightens as I notice the warm body pressed against me, the impossibly reassuring thump of someone else’s heart against my side.

Dytryk shifts, and lifts his head from my shoulder. He sees them. I feel him tense, hear his breathing get faster. I miss his small warmth, and I want to grab him before he moves away, pull him close to protect him.

“We haven’t got anything,” I say, forcing the words out and keeping my head down.

I’m too obviously scared. I know it. They know it.

Dytryk feels like a coiled spring. He pushes himself as close to me as he can. I sit forwards so he can shift behind me. I feel him grip my wet jumper in his fists.

The middle boy shrugs, his hands sunk deep in the pockets of his jeans. He raises his eyebrow. “Freak says he hasn’t got anything,” he says, turning to his friends. “Don’t think he knows what we want, though.”

The boy’s stare is his challenge. I hold his gaze for maybe a second before I look away. I push my nails into my palm—I wanted to keep looking at him. Now he’s going to think I’ve given in; he’s going to think I’m ready to get on my knees when I’m not—I’m just scared. But being scared doesn’t mean I’ll do anything he asks. It doesn’t mean I won’t fight like hell to protect the boy hiding behind me if I have to. Milo once told me that being scared is just being scared. It doesn’t mean you’re weak—it means you’re alive.

I lift my eyes to meet the boy’s stare. He looks younger than me… a little fish wishing he were a bigger one. A little fish trying to assert a bit of control over someone else for no other reason than to show he can. They don’t want to rob us. They must see we have nothing.

The longer I stare at Fish Boy, the more details of his skin fill my head. I want to write everything down. To map out what is happening so I can see it clearly. But I can’t write anything down right now. And nothing is clear.

Even if I try to convince myself these boys just want to intimidate us, it doesn’t stop my stomach churning. It doesn’t stop my body shaking more from fear than from cold.

I don’t think I’ve ever been as cold as I am right now.

Fish Boy steps forwards. “Your face is fucked up,” he states. He pushes my head back so he can stare at me. His hand is icy on my forehead. As soon as he touches me, I close my eyes. I feel poised and hyperaware. Terrified, yet ready.

Footsteps echo behind us. Someone else approaching. Dytryk’s fingers grip my skin, not just my jumper now, and the pain makes me feel balanced on the edge of a knife. Footstep after footstep, like a countdown to something.

I doubt it’s my guardian angel. After all the shit that’s happened, I kind of doubt I have one of those. Maybe Dytryk has one, though. I hear the jingle of keys. Fish Boy’s hand on me vanishes. I open my eyes, startled to see him backing up, glancing at his friends before they turn and run, chased off by nothing more than a stranger getting into his car, his mobile phone pressed to his ear.

I sink forwards, my head between my knees, trembling.

 

 

DIANA ARRIVES half an hour later. She has her key in the restaurant door before she notices us.

“Oh, sweetheart! What on earth are you doing out here at this time of day?” she calls.

Diana’s voice is like a vat of honey. I could listen to her talk all day. She’s from Trinidad via Edinburgh, and her accent seems to draw together the best of both and make them into something more.

When I don’t respond, Diana sashays across the street and pauses in front of us, hands on her ample hips. The bright green of her headscarf hurts my eyes and I squint. She doesn’t look like she should be called Diana—it’s far too ordinary. She looks like an African queen, the ruler of a country.

“Why do I get the feeling you been waiting for me? Hmm? You’re both soaked through! Tell me you’ve not been out all night in that rain?”

I feel Dytryk shrink away. Diana can seem pretty intimidating. Everything about her is loud and bright, from her violent green headscarf—that does sort of match her brightly patterned wrap dress—to her shiny purple flip-flops. But she has the biggest heart. She’d take care of the whole world if she could.

I shrug in response, though I immediately regret it from the look on her face.

Convincing Diana that I am not sleeping rough is a regular thing. Although she never quizzes me directly, I don’t think she believes I’m quite old enough—or perhaps capable enough—to be on my own. It’s one of the reasons I try not to visit her restaurant more than once a week. As it is, she insists on finding jobs for me and then paying me in food, and I know she can’t have that many jobs that need doing.

However much shit I get because of the scars on my face, I know some people just feel sorry for me. And however much I hate the name-calling, the laughter, the avoidance, the knowing someone is never going to look at me and fall in love, pity is worse. It’s like the universe acknowledging all the things I’m scared of about myself are true. They pity me because they’re so fucking glad they’re not me.

Diana means well. I know she means well. This still makes me uncomfortable, though.

“Dytryk,” I say, elbowing him gently, which, to my embarrassment, only causes him to bury his face in my neck.

Diana turns and sashays back across the road. “Come on then,” she calls over her shoulder.

We get up and follow her to the restaurant door, where she fiddles around with her enormous bunch of keys.

Dytryk appears as fascinated as I am by those keys. I’ve no idea why she has so many of them, or why she has the feathers and beads and what looks like a small dried snake all tangled up on her keyring. With that stuff in the way, it’s near impossible to fit her key in the lock. But she does. Eventually.

 

 

WE WARM up in the small kitchen at the very back of the restaurant. Diana motions us to stand near the cooker as she heats up some milk. Everything in here is spotless, from the huge shining steel pans hung in neat rows from metal hooks on the ceiling to the red-tiled floor. I stare at the shallow puddle of rainwater pooling around Dytryk’s feet and watch as it merges with the puddle around my feet. My sleeve drips as I shake—I can’t seem to stop.

“You promised me, sweetheart,” Diana mutters, shaking her head as she carefully pours the milk into two tall glasses.

She hands them to us and gestures for us to drink before she takes the pan over to the sink.

I get the feeling she’s annoyed with me. I glance over at Dytryk. His hands tremble as he puts the glass against his lips and inhales the steam.

“Couldn’t leave him.”

Diana sighs.

“I’ve brought him to you.” I push on, wondering if it would be easier to get my pad out and write down what I want to say.

“To me?” She turns and waits until I look up. “Sweetheart, what do you think I’m going to do with him?”

“Last year…. The kid on Oxford Street….”

She rolls her eyes at the ceiling. “Lord, give me strength,” she mutters. “I see kids every day, and none of them should be on the street. I wish they weren’t. I’m terrified for them. You know how many calls I’ve made to either the police or social services? You know how many times I’ve been fobbed off and told to give out the information of the nearest shelter? They’re overstretched and I’m not a social worker. I run a restaurant. That kid last year needed to be hospitalised, unfortunately. Or maybe fortunately—that worked in his favour.” She pulls a face and turns around to wash the pan. “The one kid I want off the streets is you, but you don’t want my help, do you?”

“I’m not a kid.” I glance at Dytryk. He has the half-empty glass pressed to his cheek, his eyes closed. “Please.”

With a tea towel in one hand and the clean pan in the other, she looks Dytryk up and down.

“Dytryk?” she says to him.

His eyes spring wide and he glances at me before he nods. The wary look he had last night is back.

“I’m Diana,” she says gently. “How old are you, sweetheart?”

Dytryk looks back at me again.

“How long have you been out on the streets?” she asks. “Did you run away from home?”

I shrug. I don’t think he understands.

Diana sighs again.

“Take him through to the restaurant while I make the call. And take the electric heater with you.”

 

 

THE RESTAURANT is narrow and cosy. I take Dytryk over to a small table in front of the window. Diana’s chairs have nice cushiony seats that are thankfully plastic and won’t be ruined by us sitting on them in our soggy clothes.

I plug the heater in next to Dytryk, making sure it’s not so close he’s going to drip on it, and take out my pad.

The clock on the wall says just after nine. I don’t know if I have the energy to walk home, get dry, and then walk back in to meet Micky at noon. Especially as I still don’t know what I’m going to say to him. I think about walking home after this and not meeting Micky, but that makes me feel queasy and sort of wrong. It’s not his fault I broke his phone.

I doodle a few sharks around the notes I made last night. Dytryk watches.

A few minutes later, the door to the kitchen swings open and Diana beckons me over. “I told them he was thirteen. Whether he is or not, that seemed to help spur them into action.” She sighs, a sort of despairing look on her face. “They’re sending someone over. Should only be a couple of hours…. Why don’t you stay and wait with him, sweetheart?”

I know what she’s trying to do. I shake my head. I should go.

Dytryk is watching our conversation. I walk back over to him and stand in front of his table. I hold up my hand and do a slow wave. He mirrors the gesture, but he looks sad.

“Good-bye,” I say and swallow.

He nods.

I look back at him one more time. In my head I’m taking notes I will write down later. I won’t forget him.