Authors: Gabrielle Lord
March (6 page)
‘Dude, I know. I’ll do what I can. But I’ve gotta tell you, I’m being watched like a prime time movie, and the cops have been here again, questioning me and my mum.’
‘What did they want?’
‘The same old crap. They keep asking me questions like when did I last see you, have I
heard from you at all, where do I think you could be hiding—that sort of thing. They also asked me if I wanted to help you, being your best friend and all. I’ve had no choice but to act cool, and pretend like I don’t want to help out a criminal. It’s hard. I’m trying to be convincing, but they’re very suspicious of me.’
He paused before speaking again. ‘There’s definitely someone watching our place. Lately there’s always this dude in a silver sedan parked in the street. He just sits there, pretending to do stuff—read a newspaper, talk on his phone, and write up reports.’
Boges was so good. The best person I could imagine to have on my side through this. But if they were watching him, I’d have to be even more careful. So would he.
‘You know what to do,’ I said, ‘must be a pro by now. Just keep on changing your tracks, and never let your guard down.’
‘Yeah, you too.’
‘Can you also see if you’ve got any antiseptic cream and bandages lying around?’
‘It’s true?’ Boges shouted down the line in disbelief. ‘You were attacked by a lion? Unbelievable …’
I had to laugh. It was pretty crazy.
‘I’m OK, now,’ I said, thinking back to my
recovery in Repro’s lair. ‘Luckily I stumbled across a fugitive like me who was able to help me out. Just wait until you hear about the train incident.’
‘Why? Don’t tell me you hijacked a train?’
‘A train almost hijacked me!’ I said, before briefly describing the chase with Red Singlet.
‘I’m just at the front window now,’ Boges said, ‘and that silver sedan is there again. The driver is the same guy who was watching us at Memorial Park.’
I remembered the big boofhead and how I’d helped Boges get past him. I didn’t like the sound of him being on the job outside Boges’s place.
‘You have to keep them off your back, Boges.’ And mine, too, I thought. How long was it going to be like this? For the rest of the year? Like the crazy guy warned me?
‘Yep. I gotta go, but as soon as I can get under the radar,’ said Boges, ‘we can try and meet up. Where are you staying?’
‘I don’t know.’ I ran my hands through my hair in frustration, and turned away from a guy wheeling a box up to the back of a truck nearby. ‘I’ve gotta get out of this town, I’ll be safer if I do that. I think I’ve gotta start making my way to Great-uncle Bartholomew’s place in Mount Helicon. I don’t know what else to do. I’m going to
try the St Johns place for now. Maybe see you soon?’
‘Absolutely.’
I walked around, restless, unhappy and wondering when and how I was going to get out of the city. I knew that Sligo’s people could be watching the bus depot again and rail travel was too expensive. Ages ago, Mum had made me promise I would never hitchhike, but sometimes rules have to be broken—especially when you’re living on the street.
Eventually I made my way back to the St Johns Street squat, keeping to the back lanes behind the city. Along the way, I followed old factory walls that were covered in layers of graffiti.
It wasn’t long before I saw it again.
For some reason, this tag really bothered me.
I felt a strange connection to it. Maybe I should adopt it as my motto, I thought.
Before closing in on the squat, I circled it, checking out every street, approaching it and then doubling back, making sure no-one was following me, and making sure the old house itself was empty.
Inside the front garden, I crept past the windows, listening carefully while hiding in the dense, wild overgrowth. It sounded clear so I dropped to all fours and crawled through the bushes and under the rotting verandah.
From under the floorboards, I listened carefully again. I couldn’t hear a thing, so I breathed a big sigh of relief, pushed away the carpet
off-cut
and pulled myself up through the floorboards.
The place was empty, but someone, or a bunch of someones, had definitely been in there again. A fire had been made on a sheet of iron in the middle of the room and one of my chairs had been used for firewood; its charred remains made the room stink of old smoke. Part of the walls and ceiling were black.
When it was nearly dark, I dragged some of the rubbish out the back, down through the jungle of the backyard. A dark purple flower, one of a number on a vine that had spread over part of the fence, caught my attention. For some reason it reminded me of Winter Frey and her floaty skirt with the tiny bells, and how she’d just dissolved into moonlight that night at the Memorial. I stood there for a few moments, then went back inside.
Finally, with a little more room to move, I spread out my sleeping-bag, and tried to put the troublesome girl out of my mind.
The staccato sound of helicopters shuddered across the sky and I wondered if they were looking for me. How long would this squat be safe? Somehow, I couldn’t see myself staying here until December 31, when this curse would hopefully end.
I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I got up to have a good look at my leg, which was healing pretty well. I cleaned it as best I could and
rebandaged
it, tearing up another old T-shirt.
As I tried to wash some of my clothes in the sink, rubbing hard at the stained and torn fabric, the ring that Gabbi had given me knocked on the cracked porcelain, reminding me again of everything and everyone I was missing.
I pulled out the drawings for the first time in a
few days and I stared at them, running a finger over my dad’s work. I started thinking about the empty jewellery box inside Dad’s suitcase from Ireland that we found after the break-in back home. My enemies had questioned me about a jewel that might have come from a jewellery box, but they had not mentioned anything about the cenotaph or the Piers Ormond stained glass angel—although they were very interested in knowing more about an angel. What jewellery had that empty box contained? Was that what everybody was chasing me for?
And what was the meaning of Kilfane and G’managh—the two names on the transparent piece of paper I also found in Dad’s suitcase? I wished I could have gone into another internet café to look them up, but I couldn’t risk it after seeing all the wanted stickers with my face on them, plastered around the place last time I jumped online. I’d have to call Boges again. Get him to look them up, and let me know how my blog was going.
Frustrated and as baffled as ever, I swept the drawings out of my sight and tried to go back to sleep.
I sat up, panting in the dark, not knowing how
long I’d slept until I checked my mobile. The old nightmare had been floating around again, but this time the threadbare, white toy dog had been joined by a giant shark. In the dream, the ground suddenly fell beneath me, like the train tracks had when Repro saved me, but this ground turned into a raging ocean. I was struggling to tread water when I realised that there was someone drifting away in the distance who looked exactly like me.