Beyond the second fence there’s fifty metres of open ground to cover before the first building. I crawl commando-style, my bag an unwelcome bulge on my back. Wildgirl lags behind. I pause for a second to make sure she’s following me. She creeps forward, but rolls her eyes, letting me know she’s not happy with the situation. The ukulele keeps slipping around to her front, and she keeps pushing it back irritably.
My feet drag. I feel disconnected from the task ahead of me. I want to kick myself for all the things I’ve told her. Adults always say: get it off your chest. Talk about it. You’ll feel much better afterwards. But in my experience that’s not true. I feel heavier than ever.
It takes a few minutes to reach cover. Blake warned us about booby traps, so every time I move forward I examine the dirt ahead for anything out of the ordinary. I reach the first building and squat against its breezeblock walls. There are no windows or doors on this side. The nearest light is at the foot of the closest main tower, still a long way off. This building is a small shed, barely four metres long. I listen intently. Somewhere, far off, a dog barks. Closer to us a door or a gate swings back and forth in the wind.
Wildgirl eventually makes it to where I’m sitting and crouches next to me, rubbing her elbows and grimacing. Pieces of dried grass cling to her jumper and hair. Her hands are filthy like mine.
‘Absolutely no more crawling tonight, and that’s a rule. I’m not a slug.’
I want to tell Wildgirl her ukulele is a liability and has to go, but I’m pretty sure she’ll tell me where to get off. I creep to the corner of the building. There are four other shed-like structures around us, then a tarmac expanse that looks like a car park. We’ve done it. We’re in Orphanville. I don’t know anyone who’s been inside these fences. It’s time to concentrate, but— ‘I’m confused,’ I say. I’m confused by the way things turned bad between us. I’m confused by the fact I told her a bunch of personal information and she hasn’t said anything about it.
‘What about?’ Wildgirl presses her chin over my shoulder, trying to see what I’m seeing.
‘Do I call you Nia or Wildgirl?’
‘Wildgirl, of course. I’m not calling you Jethro, am I?’
I glance back at her. Her lipstick is gone and her eyeshadow is smudged. There’s a little crease between her eyebrows that wasn’t there before. I did that to her. At the most she was hoping to go to some cool clubs tonight, and maybe see some night-time freaks. Instead I gave her my sob story.
It hurts not having the familiar weight of Gram’s lighter in my pocket. It’s still a comfort for me to touch something that he so often held. Mum would be so upset if she knew I’d lost it.
I can see the edge of one of the towers at the end of the car park, and beyond it the other towers rising straight in the night. The towers are striped across with windows, and down with a central pillar of light that must be a stairwell or elevator shaft. You can tell from the pattern of lights which buildings are more occupied and more dangerous. Less than a quarter of the lights are on in the closest tower.
It must seem so cool to the Kidds, getting to live together with no parents and no adults and no one telling you what to do. If I’d been younger when the Darkness fell, I wonder if I would have joined them.
‘So what was the plan again?’ asks Wildgirl.
It took guts to crawl through that fence. I search for my anger but it’s gone. She doesn’t have to do this, and she doesn’t have a gun to my head making me do this either. I owe it to her to make it as easy as possible. It’s a pity we haven’t thought past ‘break in to Orphanville’.
I pull Blake’s map from my pocket. It’s already wearing thin along the folds. I try to match it up with what lies in front of us, but it morphs into a mess of random writing and scribbles. I sigh. ‘I suppose we find Building Six.’
‘That’s Building Ten, I think.’ Wildgirl points at the closest tower. ‘The buildings are laid out in two semicircles. One through to Five are on the inside, Six to Ten on the outside.’ She pauses, her brow crinkling, her mouth open as if she’s about to continue. She takes the map from my hands.
‘What is it?’ I ask.
‘Nothing,’ she replies. ‘I thought…the placement of the buildings. It’s hard to tell.’
‘Well, if that’s number Ten, the one diagonally behind it is One. Which means Six will be on the left-hand side, right at the end. I think we should go through the middle of the two rows. That way we can go either left or right for cover.’
I stand up and take a few steps away from the shed, so I can see better. The closest towers are mostly dark. Wildgirl was right. We need to work together on this. Maybe it will be easier than we’ve anticipated. It won’t take us long to get to Building Six. We could be in and out in fifteen minutes. ‘Careful,’ says Wildgirl.
‘It’s fine,’ I say, just as a bright beam of light cuts across my arm and sweeps across my torso. I drop to the ground, half blinded, my vision full of sparkles.