‘What the fuck was that?’
I’m screaming
and Nicu’s
behind me
screaming back.
What just happened?
Did Dan get stabbed?
I mean,
Wood-Green-gang-stabbed
like the proper hood boy he pretends to be?
Yeah,
he deserved to get hurt,
but why did Nicu have to be the one to do it?
And why now,
just as we were getting away,
just when I thought things were looking
up?
We round a corner,
leg it down an alleyway
and almost collapse at
the end
of it,
hiding between a pair of wheelie bins.
‘How badly did you hurt him?’ I blurt out.
‘Did you kill him?’
Nicu can’t speak.
He’s just gasping, panting,
then punching one of the wheelie bins to bits.
Punching and
hollering and
punching and
hollering.
I’ve no idea what he’s saying.
‘Stop!’ I scream
and grab his hand.
‘Your hand’s bleeding,’ I say,
feeling the blood’s slipperiness between my fingers,
coughing up a little bubble of sick.
He exhales.
‘Not my blood, Jess,’ he says.
I close my eyes, thinking.
Thinking.
What do we do now?
Where do we go?
Mum? Dawn?
The police?
That’s it:
we go to the police.
It was self-defence,
broad daylight.
I hold on to Nicu
tight,
two hands gripping his shoulders.
‘We have to give ourselves up.’
‘No.’
‘If we run away
it’ll look well suspicious.
They’ll think we meant it.’
He shakes his head,
pulls his cloak
up to hide his face.
‘We have to, Nicu.
We haven’t got a choice.’
He steps away from me,
eyes filling with tears,
looking like a little kid.
‘You have choice, Jess,
because police believing
white girl
speaking good English.
But me.
They seeing only
gypsy boy
with
criminal paper.’
He kicks the wall.
‘Shit,’ I say,
because he’s right.
The police wouldn’t believe him for a second,
and not just Nicu;
with my offender’s record
they wouldn’t believe me either.
We’re textbook delinquents.
Guilty before we’ve even
opened our mouths.
‘We must to go far away now,’ he says.
‘We can cutting hair and
changing names
and nobody remember
us
after.
OK, Jess?’
He wipes his hands on his cloak,
shudders when a dog in the distance
barks.
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘I think we have to go
away like we planned.’
I take his hand.
I hold on tight.
‘Let’s get you cleaned up
first,’ I say.
‘Let’s wash this blood off your hands.’