Foxes (10 page)

“Is it because of what I said? I’m sorry. I really, really wasn’t… I’d never laugh at you, Danny. Never. I swear on my life.”

My heart hurts. It beats faster, and with every beat, it hurts.

“I can’t pretend,” I say.

Micky frowns.

“I don’t want you to pretend I’m not a freak.” I force the words out, feeling sick even as I say them.

“What?” Micky swallows.

He looks upset and I feel awful, but this is what I’m suddenly afraid Micky has been doing.

I can’t pretend like this—it isn’t
fair
, even if we only do it for a little while. Even though I want it so badly, I will never be normal. I will never have a normal face that someone is going to look at and like. Pretending makes me feel even worse than a joke.

I shove my overlong hair back behind my ears and try to meet his gaze. He won’t look at me. Instead he closes his eyes, and his expression makes me think he’s wishing himself away from this moment.

“I’ve got to go,” I whisper, and when I step around him, he doesn’t try to stop me.

He doesn’t react in any way. I’m not even sure he knows I’ve gone.

YOU PUSHED
him away.
Dashiel’s voice rings in my head, louder than the traffic I’m racing past, heavier than the weight of the sky. I’ve never heard him sound quite so clear.
Why the fuck did you push him away?

“MILO?” I
hammer my fist against the warped plywood panel he uses as a door. I need company. “Milo!” I shout louder.

Milo’s shell always smells bad, even from outside the door, but I don’t care right now. I don’t want to write down these words filling my head. It would make them too real—they would wrap around me and I would lose myself in them. I would end up forcing myself to read them again and again. For once I want to say them to someone, to let them rest in the air and slowly fade away like the scent of a bonfire on the breeze.

Everything spills out of my mouth as soon as Milo opens the door, sleepily running his hands up and down his face. All the words, no breathing.

“I followed someone last night—a shark. I followed him to a warehouse that’s been turned into flats. This shark creeped Dashiel out. He could be the killer. The door has a keypad. I could break in. But there’s no space in my head to think clearly, my head is filled with hormones and thoughts about someone who just wants to pretend with me. I can’t get him out of my head.”

“You taken something?” Milo squints at me and purses his lips. “Speed, coke?”

“What? No.” I scowl.

“Those were a lot of words just then. For you, anyways.” He yawns and runs a dirty hand through his messy mane of hair.

I have a feeling Milo was napping and I woke him up. I feel bad.

I stare at my hands. The skin is still cracked and sore from my night in the rain with Dytryk. I’m shaking a little from cold, a little from being so tired. The words poured out of me, but it didn’t help. I’m not sure Milo even heard them, and I can’t repeat them.

“Come on in, then.” Milo sighs.

Milo’s shell is bigger than my room, but that only makes it colder. The mosaic tiles are beautiful. Different animals decorate the walls in muted blues and whites and oranges. Milo sleeps in a sunken bath in the center of the room, with the mosaic of a swan with its wings outstretched on the bottom.

I sit down on the floor while Milo turns his stove on. He drags a blanket off his bed and places it around my shoulders. We’re silent with each other while the water boils and he makes me some of the weird-smelling oriental tea the Chinese lady in the flower shop always gives him. Apparently it’s a miracle hangover cure. He tenses when he sits down next to me, and I know he has something to say.

“First off, why should you be out there following fuckers home? What are you looking for, exactly? Do you have any idea? The killer’s secret handshake or something? The police are mostly arseholes, but at least they’re not running around like little blind mice likely to get their tails chopped off.”

I open my mouth to speak, but Milo holds up his finger to stop me. “And second, your head is not filled with hormones—your body maybe, your dick probably, but not your head.”

He takes a sip of tea and pulls a face. “And third. What’s wrong with pretending? Is it raining fucking peace and happiness out there? Did I miss something? Because if not, I’m okay with a whole fucking world of pretending. You see this palace?” Milo gestures around. “Warmest fucking palace in all of Persia.”

I sigh. The one time I want to talk, and Milo just wants me to listen. I used to be okay with that. But there’s so much stuff I don’t understand anymore.

I don’t think listening’s enough.

AFTER I
see Milo, I go back to my shell and sleep. Exhaustion makes me weak and upset, but as soon as I close my eyes and wrap my warm blankets around me, I’m nothing more than a sleeping body.

I dream of Dashiel. I dream he’s at the bus shelter talking to Micky. I can’t see Micky’s face, but I know it’s him because my heart beats faster and warmth swells through me as though I’m a balloon filled with hot water. The only thing I want is to be in the bus shelter with them, but I’m a long way off. I shout and shout, but they can’t hear me. It’s not a nightmare, but when I wake up, my throat is sore and I wonder if I really was calling out.

My shell is dark. I turn on my torch and heat up half a can of soup on the stove. I leave the other half in the can. Later, I take it outside and put it against the wall, near the spot where I saw the foxes yesterday morning.

Who knows if foxes like unnaturally orange soup with chunks of unidentifiable vegetables. All I know is I’ll eat just about anything if I’m hungry enough.

IT’S STILL
early evening when I head back into the city. There’s a possibly not-completely-legal phone shop in a basement in Chinatown. Sometimes they let me trade fixing a few screens for phone supplies or food. I’m hoping I can get something that will help me fix one of my broken phones so that I can use it.

Even as I walk across the inkwell dark in the middle of the common, needing to be aware of the night around me, I still can’t help thinking about Micky. I regret what I said. I regret running away from him—but more than that, I’m worried about him. Worried about him being out on the streets with all the sharks. Every time I close my eyes, I see him standing in front of me, eyes closed, wishing himself away.

He needs protecting. His shell is paper-thin.

“YOU CAN’T
make a checklist for everyone out here. It’s impossible.”

Donna peers over my shoulder and I snap my notepad shut, careful not to let her see the front—the stupid title and badly drawn sharks. I should probably rip that damn front page off.

“Here.” She hands me a polystyrene cup of tea from the all-night café behind us and sits down on the wall next to me. The cup is so full and hot, I almost drop it. “Every night different people are out here. It doesn’t mean a person is missing just ’cause they don’t work one night. Is this what we’ve been walking around all night for?”

I shrug. Donna spotted me earlier by the park after I’d been to Chinatown, and insisted on walking around with me. I won’t tell her what I’m doing.

I’ve not only been making a list of all the guys, mostly I’ve been looking for Micky. If I saw any guys as we walked, though, I made a little note. We hung around the deserted street where I saw the boy who looked like Dashiel get picked up that first night, looking for the same shark, but the place gave Donna the creeps, so we didn’t stay long.

Dollman appeared, and for a little while, we followed him until Donna noticed we were going in the same direction as the weirdo in front of us and started to say things like “Wouldn’t it be strange if that guy in front thought we were following him when we
obviously
weren’t.”

I fully intend to head to the warehouse later if only to take a better look. Tomorrow I’ll make sure Donna doesn’t find me, so I can follow Dollman around again. At the moment he is the best lead I’ve got. All I can do is hope no one else goes missing before then.

It’s funny the times that it hits me, but suddenly I remember how scared I felt the days after Dashiel went missing. He wasn’t missing for long. Thirty-six hours after he didn’t return home, his body was found on the wasteland.

“Can I borrow your phone?” I ask Donna.

She hands it over without question.

Without letting myself think too hard about what to say, I text Micky. I just need to know he’s okay. I care about him so much and I’m worrying about him. It’s too late to rein these feelings in.

Where are you? It’s Danny.

It feels weird to be texting my own number. After a heartbeat I send another text.

I’m sorry.

I stare at the phone for a minute, but there’s no reply. What did I expect? I’ve not really got much right to feel disappointed—he wasn’t the one who ran away.

I hand the phone back to Donna.

“You okay?” she asks, drawing her eyebrows together.

I nod. “I’m going to go home.”

“Okay.”

“Want me to walk you back first?” I ask her.

“No, it’s only down the road from here.”

I feel about a hundred years old.

“Find me tomorrow, yeah?” she adds.

I nod, but I know I won’t.

THE NEXT
day I half manage to fix one of my broken phones with the supplies I bartered for at the phone shop last night. It takes me all morning. I’m just about ready to fling the stupid thing at the wall when it turns on for a minute and gets a signal before it turns off. It does this repeatedly: one minute on, then it turns itself off.

I jump up out of my blankets and run once around my shell doing a naked and probably crazy victory dance. A minute at a time will do! This means I have a chance at working that lock on the door of Dollman’s warehouse. I don’t know exactly how to do it—I’ll need to check a few things out, but I’ve got an idea.

When I was fifteen, I spent some time in a home for kids who didn’t fit in anywhere else. One of the boys there, David, was fascinated with unlocking things. Unlocking
everything
. It started off with physical things like the house locks, which he’d dismantle to get a better look at, and all the house staff would go crazy at him. Somehow he found out you could do the same thing with computers and other electrical stuff.

It’s because of David that I can fix the things I fix. We weren’t friends, exactly, but I didn’t make fun of him or try to talk to him, and I think he appreciated that. We both wanted to be left alone.

David liked phones because they were like minicomputers to him. He never taught me or showed me, but he let me copy him, and sometimes if I got stuff wrong, he’d take it out of my hands and make it right. He never spoke. I think he could—he just never wanted to.

The can of soup I left outside remains uneaten. I guess the foxes were just passing through.

IT’S MIDNIGHT
and it’s starting to rain when Donna sees me standing at the corner of the park. I decide Dollman must come by here if he’s headed from the warehouse to the embankment. It’d be the most direct route.

Donna holds a small black plastic bag over her head and jogs toward me.

“Who’s Micky?” is the first thing she asks me, eyebrow raised, looking as though she’s trying not to smile.

I frown, confused as to why she’d ask me that.

Her teeth are chattering and she’s shivering badly. I hope she’s on her way home. She pulls out her phone and shows me four separate texts.

My face is made of happy elastic. I don’t even try to cover my helpless, giddy smile as I take the phone and scroll through the texts myself.

Please don’t say sorry. Micky :)

Where are you?

I’m happy you text me so I have your number.

Come find me.

“He tried to call, but I didn’t answer. I thought it might be a bit weird, considering I have no idea who he is and what’s going on between you two.”

I glance up, and Donna smiles as if she knows something I don’t. “Nothing’s going on.” I’m embarrassed. I pass back her phone.

“It’s okay,” she says. Even her eyes are smiling now. “You like him, don’t you?”

I shake my head. I want to disappear into a hole in the ground.

“You lit up just then, you know.” Donna raises her eyebrow as though she’s challenging me to deny it in the face of all the evidence. “It’s okay to like someone,” she carries on, making me feel worse.

“It’s not okay,” I say miserably. “For me to feel that way about Micky—it’s not okay.”

“Why not?”

I start walking and Donna runs to catch up. I slow down, feeling like a dick—she has her shoes in her hand, which means she can’t walk fast and look out for glass at the same time.

“I’m going to meet up with Vinny. Want to come?” she asks.

I’m grateful for the change of subject, but I don’t know whether I want to see Vinny again. It’s not that I don’t like her, it’s just that I’m afraid she’s going to ask me something awkward. I’m surprised Donna is seeing her again. They didn’t seem to like each other much.

Vinny is sitting in a bus shelter a little farther up the side of the park. She’s wearing jeans and a blue padded coat. Not the sort of clothes she’d be wearing if she were working. She still glitters, though. Some people just do.

“Loki!” Vinny grins.

The overexaggerated way she winks at me makes me suspect Donna has told her my real name. I’m not in the mood to play games so I just say “Hi” really softly.

The atmosphere between them is different. Sort of quiet. They smile at each other. I step back outside the bus shelter and look up at the black branches of the trees next to us, watching how they make such pretty patterns against the navy blue of the sky. Wondering why we find some things so beautiful. When I look back down, Vinny is holding Donna’s hand, and they’re talking quietly to each other. I stare at their hands for a minute. I remember how it felt to hold Dytryk’s hand, how cold he was and at the same time, how warm. And even though I didn’t know him at all, I miss him. Maybe I always will. Maybe I will miss everyone I’ve ever felt close to, everyone I’ve ever known—even if I know them still, I’ll miss them, miss each moment as it passes. Because moments are all we have and they never come back. I didn’t used to think I was a feeling-sad sort of person, but sometimes this sort of sadness is so big inside me. Maybe it’s because of Dashiel.