Abi and Mo. That was what the girl and boy were called.
Timi saw them the next day after school. They were with some other children, who were also a bit older than him. 15
‘That’s Timi,’ Abi said when they saw him. Timi spotted that today she had curly lines drawn onto her hands in pink and blue. It made him think of the spiral of a snail shell, which was one of those things that Timi could look at for a really long time.
Some of the other kids muttered hello to him. He looked over at them briefly and spotted a collection of things about them: one of them had laces undone that were trailing from their shoe, reminding Timi of snake skins left lying on the ground. He’d never seen a snakeskin in real life, but he’d learned about them in school. Another boy had large deep, brown eyes that glowed like pebbles after it had been raining. A girl wore a headscarf and Timi noticed thar she rubbed the fabric of it very gently between her thumb and finger when she talked. 16
He had a strange kind of feeling. It was two things at the same time: he wanted to be alone and yet he wanted to be with them too.
‘We’re thinking of breaking in to the library,’ Mo said.
‘How are we going to get in?’ the kid with the undone shoelaces asked.
‘I know the code to the door,’ Abi said. ‘My mum worked there.’
‘But it’s closed down,’ said the brown-eyed boy. He really did have big eyes. But they looked worried now.
‘So what?’ Abi asked.
‘It’s haunted too, you know,’ said Mo to the boy with big eyes.
Timi knew the library that they were talking about. It had shut down a few weeks ago. It was quite an old building that had 17red bricks and white stone patterns around the windows. Timi had spotted before that some of the bricks had lichen growing over them – a kind of fungus that looked pale green and grew in patches.
He’d walked past the library with his mum a couple of days ago and saw the door was shut and the lights weren’t on. The windows looked like dark pools and it seemed even older somehow, like that – all closed up with no lights on.
‘Are you afraid of ghosts?’ Mo said to the big-eyed boy. He stood in a way that made him look much taller as he spoke. Timi thought that he could see his spine unfurling like a beanstalk would rising up from its seed.
‘I’ll go in,’ said the boy, although his voice sounded quiet. 18
‘What about you, Timi?’ Abi asked. ‘Will you go in?’
Timi thought about his mum telling him this morning that he was going to get collected from the club by his auntie.
She said that he would probably have to stay overnight with his auntie, too. They needed to do some checks on her and the baby at the hospital.
You stay with your auntie.
You be a good boy.
‘I’ll go in,’ Timi said.