They’re dressed in black, white and red, that’s the first thing I notice. Two girls, one boy. Around thirteen or fourteen years old, although it’s hard to tell with their costumes. All three wear ruffled shirts and puffy black pants. Units often have a dress code, in the same way that Dreamers like to wear white and all necroheads are bald. I lay our bikes on the ground at the mouth of the bridge. I’ve got at least twenty centimetres and almost as many kilograms on each of them. If they’re unarmed and not sugared up then I should be able to handle this.
Wildgirl calls out to the strangers, ‘Who are you?’
The tallest girl speaks. It’s obvious she’s the leader seventeen because she wears a big Napoleon hat and the other two stand behind her. Her hands are perched on her hips as she addresses us. ‘Actually, fair maiden, the question is: who the hell are you, trip-trapping over my bridge?’
There’s barely a beat before Wildgirl replies, ‘Well, we’re not goats, if that’s what you’re asking. There are three of you. So that makes you the goats, doesn’t it?’
The captain’s lip curls. She flicks her plaits over her shoulders. Her face is thin and alert and freckled.
‘We’re trolls, don’t you know? We guard the bridge.’
‘Well, you look more like pirates to me.’
Wildgirl is right. I may not be following the conversation at all, but the Kidds do look like pirates. The smaller girl even has an eye patch, although she’s wearing it above her eye, rather than over it. Patch-girl speaks now, in a reedy voice that matches her reedy arms and wispy hair. ‘No-oooh. We’re trolls.’
They’re all wired to the moon, Wildgirl included.
The captain steps up to Wildgirl, gets right up in her face, and to her credit Wildgirl doesn’t back off one inch. They eyeball each other until somehow they reach a wordless agreement not to punch each other’s lights out.
‘We’re freelancers,’ says the captain. ‘Freelance mushroom-merchants and bridge-keepers.’
I check all three pirates for weapons, but I can’t see anyone packing. My muscles loosen and I rise from the slight crouch I didn’t know I’d dropped into. Patch-girl carries a wicker basket covered with a tea towel.
‘How much do the Kidds pay you to guard the bridge?’ I ask the captain.
Patch-girl steps forward. ‘We’re not slaves. We work on our own.’ She probably intends to sound disgusted, but her high voice makes her sound more like a little girl who’s found fairies living at the bottom of her garden.
‘So do we,’ says Wildgirl. ‘Me and Sasquatch here. We’re trained ninjas. We studied with the Grand High Master for three years on an isolated mountaintop.’
She glances at me and I roll my eyes. Lunatic conversation. Yeah, that’s exactly what we need right now.
The two girls look at me without interest and then return to Wildgirl. They don’t question her unlikely story. They’ve realised Wildgirl’s from outside and that makes her far more interesting than me. The pirate-boy hangs back, looking at us from under a scarf decorated with skull and crossbones. I nod at him but he’s blank as anything. Wildgirl and the captain both have their hands in their pockets now, seemingly having a friendly conversation.
Wildgirl looks at patch-girl’s basket. ‘What’s in there?’
Patch-girl pulls the towel away. ‘Midnight shrooms. You want some?’
Wildgirl shakes her head and patch-girl smooths the towel back into place.
‘What are you doing at the river? Your sort never come around these parts.’
To my surprise, after all the ninja talk, Wildgirl tells the truth. ‘We’re going to break in to Orphanville. The Kidds stole something from us, and we’re going to steal it back.’
Great. Tell the strangers our secret plan.
Patch-girl’s eyes are a pair of shiny coins. ‘Coooool.’
The captain isn’t as easily impressed. ‘Are you sure that’s where you’re going? Because as soon as I saw you I thought to myself, they’re off to the velo for sure.’
‘The velo?’
I’m as puzzled as Wildgirl is. I look to where the captain is pointing, further along the river, past St Judes.
‘The bike place. The dog place.’ She must be talking about the velodrome, but I’ve got no idea what it has to do with dogs. Maybe they used to race greyhounds there. I’m about to ask her exactly what she means when Wildgirl leaps in.
‘Nope. Orphanville. That’s where we’re going.’
‘What did the Kidds steal?’
‘Something important.’
‘Which unit?’
I answer for Wildgirl. ‘The Six-Sevens.’
‘The Elf?’ The captain is surprised.
‘He came this way not fifteen minutes ago,’ patch-girl butts in. ‘All of them, heading back to base. It looked like something really exciting was going on!’
The captain shushes her and thinks for a moment, tugging on the waterfall of white material at her throat. When she finally speaks all the silliness has gone from her voice. ‘You need to find their safe room. Every building has safe rooms. One room for every unit that lives there. The Kidds in each building are sworn to secrecy on the location of their rooms, but people talk.’
‘How do you know about that?’ I ask.
‘I used to be a Kidd. But I didn’t like the rules, so I left.’
The captain looks me straight in the eye. Against all better sense, I believe her. Behind her, pirate-boy has dropped to his hands and knees as if he’s looking for something in the dirt.
‘What’s with him?’
‘Cabin Boy Pete? He doesn’t like talking much. Now. We gave you something. It’s time for you to pay the toll.’ ‘Says who?’
‘Says me. It’s the rules. You cross the bridge, you pay the toll.’
‘Sure. How much is it?’
I have some cash. You never know who you’re gonna have to pay off around here. It’s time to wind this up before someone else comes along and sees us. Two people dressed in black can fly under the radar if they’re careful. Five people, including three flamboyantly dressed pirates— that’s another matter.
‘It will cost the handsome price of one kiss,’ says the captain.
‘No way.’
There’s no chance I’m getting any closer to the captain than I already am. I’m no authority on pirates or trolls, but I’m guessing dental hygiene isn’t high on their list of priorities.
‘I didn’t mean you, stupid.’ She gives me a withering look and then turns to Wildgirl. At first I think the captain has a nervous twitch, but then I realise she’s trying to flutter her eyelashes. She can’t be serious.
Wildgirl steps forward without hesitation. ‘That’s fine. Pucker up, you piratical wench!’
‘Wait,’ says Cabin Boy Pete. He sits on his haunches and points at our bikes. The front wheel of mine still spins lazily. I look at him more closely. I’ve heard his voice before. ‘No!’ The captain is adamant. ‘We don’t ride bikes anymore, remember?’
‘Sell them,’ insists Pete, gnawing on his lip. I stare at his face, trying to figure out why he’s familiar to me.
‘To who? Kidds?’ The captain spits on the ground and turns away from Pete. He falls back on all fours, moving his hand in a circular motion above the ground. It takes me a moment to realise that he’s washing the decks of an imaginary ship with an imaginary scrubbing brush. Something catches in my brain. Pete. Peter. I do know this guy.
‘Peter Kouros?’
Pete doesn’t acknowledge me. He steps up his pretend-scrubbing efforts. Peter Kouros was in the year below me at school. Nice guy. He came top in nearly every subject but you would never hear him brag about it. Sometime after the Darkness began, while Paul and Thom and I were still going to classes, he disappeared. Paul knew him better than I did because they used to play chess together at lunchtime, and even he couldn’t find out why Peter dropped out or where he went. Now I know. He joined the Kidds.
‘What did he ever do to you?’ I ask the captain. I can’t believe that the boy grovelling in front of me is the same guy I used to go to school with. He’s skin and bones.
‘Cabin Boy did something bad. And now he wants to make it up to me.’
‘What have you done to him?’
‘What have I done?’ The captain’s voice rises. ‘I rescued him. You should be asking what did they do to him.’
Wildgirl puts herself between the captain and me. ‘We can’t give you our bikes. We need them to get away.
What else do you want?’
The captain is sulking now. ‘I was joking about the kiss,’ she says to Wildgirl. ‘I might catch something off you anyway, something from outside. Sunstroke, or sunburn or something.’
‘Well, I wasn’t joking,’ replies Wildgirl. As much as I want to throttle her for dragging this out she’s undeniably better at diplomacy than I am. ‘But stop stuffing us around. We’re kind of in a rush. What do you want?’
Patch-girl pipes up. She’s still looking at our fallen-down bikes. ‘I want THAT. The red thing. I want that.’ We all look at Wildgirl’s red handbag pinned underneath the handlebars. I look at Wildgirl. She shrugs, way too casually.
‘That old thing? Sure, I mean, if you can put up with all the stains and the broken zip and the funky smell. Why not?’
Patch-girl looks pleadingly at the captain. Beside me, Wildgirl holds her breath.
The captain sighs. ‘I guess we can use it to carry mushrooms.’
Patch-girl jumps up and down and claps her hands. Wildgirl lets out a lungful of air. She walks to her bike, gallows-slow, unhooks her bag from the handlebars, then comes up behind me and unzips my backpack. The straps tug at my shoulders when she tips the contents of her bag into mine. The ukulele doesn’t fit so she slings it across her shoulders again. She passes the bag to the captain, who gives it to patch-girl, who hugs it to her chest. Good. Now we can finally get a move on.
‘I’m sorry,’ says the captain. ‘But this is how we make a living.’
Wildgirl stares daggers at patch-girl. Peter Kouros is standing up now, his body half turned away from us as if he can’t wait to leave. I put my hand on his shoulder. I can feel the sharp edge of his shoulder blade just under the skin. ‘Peter,’ I say quietly, ‘do you remember me?’ I bend down and try to catch his eye but he’s stiff as a board. I wait a few moments and then I give up. I don’t know what I’m hoping for. We can’t take him with us to Orphanville anyway. I grab my bike and nod at Wildgirl.
‘Sorry,’ repeats the captain.
Wildgirl goes to pick up her bike, but at the last minute she darts across to the captain and kisses her hard on the mouth. Wildgirl dips her backwards and the captain’s hat falls off. It’s a real Hollywood moment. I look away. When I look back the captain is picking her hat up and saluting Wildgirl with a big grin on her face.
Wildgirl stalks to her bike without looking back. She wasn’t joking in that booth about stealing hearts. The captain clicks her heels together. ‘Snip, snap, snout, this tale is told out!’ She waves her arm theatrically at her troop, and they fall in behind her.
I don’t say anything until we’re pushing our bikes up the steep hill that leads to Orphanville.
‘Why did you do that?’ I ask, like a stupid person.
‘Give me a break,’ Wildgirl says. ‘Why do I do anything?’ She’s puffing. I could put my hand on her back and help her up the steep incline, but I don’t.
‘You mean, why do you enjoy messing around with people’s feelings?’ I say.
‘You know what? She just met me. I think she’ll get over it. Are you jealous?’
‘No. Why would I be jealous of a crazy person? Because they were crazy, you know. All of them.’
Including Peter. Who used to be one of the most normal people I know. Maybe I shouldn’t have left him behind. I might be the only person from before who knows where he is. I look back down the slope, but already the riverbank is deserted.
‘Well, those crazy people gave us an important piece of information that we wouldn’t have otherwise, so I don’t know what you’re so shitty about.’
Wildgirl concentrates on getting her bike up the hill and freezing me out. I’m not sure if I should press on, or chase after Peter, or at least message Paul to let him know I saw him. In the end I keep moving forwards. At the top of the slope there’s a strip of ground that’s covered with a thin layer of dead, flattened grass. The chain-link fence is tall—over nine feet—but there’s no barbed wire on top. We should be able to climb it. I balance my bike against the fence and look through. We’re at the rear of Orphanville and there are fewer lights than if we were coming at it from the front. This is the closest I’ve ever been to the Kidds’ headquarters, and it looks surprisingly ordinary. The first buildings are a hundred metres away. I make out something else in the distance, before the buildings, something that obscures our view of the grounds.
‘There’s another fence,’ I say, surprised. ‘Blake didn’t put that on the map.’
Blake didn’t mention anything about a safe room either, and I can’t believe she’d forget to tell us something that important. She’d have to know about them, spending a year with the Kidds. I think of her alone in my house. I do my best to swallow my suspicion. There’s no point getting paranoid. Blake is a good person.
I drop my backpack on the ground and find the map in my jeans pocket. Wildgirl lies flat on her back with her arms stretched out like she’s making grass angels. The ukulele nestles into her side.
So that’s it. Her official job is kissing strangers and lying around. My job apparently is making sense of all of this, and figuring out what to do next. Despite the fact this was all her idea. I sit down and unfold the map. There’s only one fence marked on the map. I hope this doesn’t mean there are other mistakes.
Wildgirl’s voice rises from her bed. ‘Look. We forgot about the moon.’
I follow her pointed finger. The moon sits high above us, smaller and further away now. Only a wisp of cloud remains. I hadn’t forgotten about the moon for a second. ‘It would be better for us if there’s no moon. Less light to be seen by.’ I turn back to the map with some effort, but Wildgirl tugs on my t-shirt. She pulls herself up and holds out her hand.
‘What?’ I’m trying to concentrate here. For someone who talked me into this, Wildgirl is showing a remarkable lack of interest in the details of our death-mission. She keeps her hand out until I realise she wants me to shake it.
‘Pleased to meet you, Jethro,’ she says, gripping my hand tightly with both of hers. ‘My name is Nia.’
I stare at her, not really understanding.
‘Nia,’ she repeats. ‘Not Wildgirl. Nia. That’s my real name. N–I–A. It’s Gaelic. Or Swahili. Looks like I’m either half-Irish or half-African. Maybe both. Stop me talking any time soon, won’t you?’
‘Why are you telling me this now?’ I’m still staring. What is she playing at? ‘Look, this isn’t a game. If you’re doing this so you have something to tell your friends about when you get home, don’t. I don’t need your help. I can do without the stupid lighter.’
‘No, that’s where you’re wrong. You do need my help, only you can’t see it.’ Wildgirl’s eyes flash with annoyance. ‘I thought I should tell you my name before we go in there, because we have to be in this together. A team. No secrets and no bullshit.’
I should be pleased she told me her name. It means she trusts me, at least a little. But I wouldn’t mind knowing what she means by team. Does she want me to be like her childhood friend, whatshisname?
‘I’m doing this for you,’ she says, even though she’s glaring still. But I didn’t ask you to, I want to say. I never asked for her help. Am I such a mess, such a charity case, that she has to step in?
I see myself for a second through her eyes. A guy too lazy and too cowardly to take action when he should. I’m not worth the effort, I feel like telling her. A phantom-punch curls my fingers again, and I wouldn’t know who I’d choose to spend it on first. I’m so confused. If I sit here and keep thinking, something in my head is going to break. I get to my feet and squash the map in my pocket. The fence rises high above us.
‘Come on. I’ll give you a boost up.’