‘It creeps me out, when he looks at me,’ Gerda told Lil, ‘the boy with the beard.’
‘Tell him to fuck off.’ Lil wasn’t bothered. ‘I tell him to fuck off all the time.’
They were walking in the sunlight with a huge grey deerhound that was there when Gerda woke the first morning. The golden-skinned girl claimed it was hers. ‘I call him Wolfy.’ Fortunately Gerda was OK with animals. She gave him the Three Musketeers chocolate bar she had half-eaten in the taxi from the airport, and the dog wolfed it, and licked her hand. She felt at home with him after that. Gerda got credit from Lil for courage as she walked along with her fingers plunged into the wiry curls at the base of his neck, which meant she had to hold her arm up. He was awesomely tall, with a noble head and oddly long, speedy hindquarters. ‘The others are scared of Wolfy. You’re not.’
It’s not really true, Gerda thought to herself. The others aren’t scared, or not very scared, and I am, slightly, but I’m hiding it. Lil made this up so she can think I’m special, so she has a good reason to feel what she feels.
The truth is, the feeling’s about her, not me. Lil is lonely among all those Divs. She just needs someone she can have fun with. It’s not really about me at all.
(But I like her. So is that about me?)
‘He’s not your boyfriend, is he?’ Gerda asked. Suddenly it mattered that he was not.
‘Boyfriend? Him? I haven’t got a boyfriend. Why would I want a boyfriend?’ Lil said the word as if squeezing it in tweezers prior to disposing of it in toxic waste.
‘Well, on your rock there’s a lot of boys.’
‘On the rock it’s a different world.’ Lil reached out without warning and grabbed Gerda’s wrist, quite painfully tight, then let it go and interlaced their fingers. They walked along with the dog between them, a bridge of hands over giant Wolfy, arms too high to be relaxed, like a flying buttress on a church. Gerda felt awkward, glad and proud. Lil queened it over all of them, but she saw Gerda as an equal.
Somebody’s noticed I’m special, thought Gerda. Someone from the other side of the world. ‘Do you think life would be better if it was just girls?’ she asked cautiously.
‘Obviously,’ Lil Robber said. ‘But boys are useful to do things for us.’
Gerda suddenly remembered something. ‘I went to an allgirls’ school,’ Gerda said. ‘It wasn’t better, it was actually awful.’
‘That’s school,’ said Lil. ‘School’s awful. It’s prison, isn’t it.’
‘Still you have to learn things,’ Gerda said.
‘School is prison for innocent people.’ (Gerda thought: she’s said that before.) ‘I pity you for being locked up,’ Lil added, but her face said something more complex, more resentful.
‘One of the teachers was good,’ said Gerda. Lil was so sure of her opinions, and Gerda needed to hang on to her own.
‘That’s like saying “I had a nice prison guard”.’
‘It’s – all about your point of view,’ said Gerda. ‘It’s an Assertion, not a Fact.’ She could feel the mute force of Lil’s anger. The Robber Girl couldn’t answer her.
The dog was loping along by the lake, blue-grey-black against the blue-dark water. He had escaped their arch of hands, which had collapsed into a hanging garland that they swung, swung as they kept in step.
Then an army of crows landed in the shallows, splashing, pecking at the brightness, chattering. Suddenly the dog leaped into the lake.
Lil rounded on Gerda, eyes blazing topaz, hands on hips, cheeks heavy and red.
‘Now you got to get him back. Fact.’