Boy in the Tower (7 page)

‘From your window?’

‘No, I was there. I was standing next to them when it happened.’

Gaia lifted her head and looked me straight in the eye.

‘I’d forgotten to get milk so I went really quickly to get some and then I was running past the policemen and they started falling over. One after the other. Just like they were falling asleep or something. I ran away when they started doing it. I didn’t know that they were dying, I didn’t know. They looked like they were just falling asleep.’

‘Did they look like they were in pain?’ Gaia asked.

‘No, not really. They just fell down. It happened pretty quickly.’

Gaia didn’t say anything. It looked like she was thinking it through.

‘What do you think made them die?’ I asked her.

‘I’ve no idea,’ she said. ‘I still think it’s to do with the fallen buildings, though. The policemen were right by one of them, weren’t they?’

‘Yes, the same one as those other two men. But they were standing just in front of it.’

‘Have you looked out of your window recently? Have you seen how the buildings are falling?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘There’s a pattern,’ Gaia said.

She reached into her pocket and brought out a folded-up piece of paper and handed it to me.

It was a drawing but it took me a moment to realize it was a map. A map of where we lived. There was a drawing of Gaia’s tower and my block and our school. Then there were lots of red dots which had numbers next to them. They roughly made a circle shape. In the middle of the circle was a star that was labelled
Pub – The George
, which had a number one written next to it.

‘I’ve been filling it in each night. The red dots are the fallen buildings. And the numbers show the day they fell in. It’s how many days have passed since that first pub fell down. Can you see how it’s spreading outwards? The number twos and threes are close to the pub and then the nines and tens are on the outside.’

‘What’s this one here?’ I pointed to a red dot that looked like it had a one and a two next to it.

‘That’s twelve. Twelve days after. It looks like the buildings which have been missed out are falling now.’

‘And these are our blocks,’ I said, pointing to the two wobbly drawings of our towers, one with a capital G above it and the other with a capital A.

‘Yes,’ Gaia said.

‘They’re so close to the other fallen buildings.’ Our towers were right next to buildings which had fallen five days after the pub collapsed. ‘It . . . it . . . could be us next.’

‘Yes. Exactly,’ Gaia said.

‘Have you shown this to anyone?’ I said.

Gaia shrugged.

‘I wonder if the police have realized this is happening,’ I said.

‘I’m sure they know,’ Gaia said. ‘Maybe they’re hiding it from us so we don’t all panic.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, I was talking to Mum about it last night and she wants us to pack up and leave now.’

‘Leave?’ My voice sounded sharp and shaky all at the same time. ‘Where would you go?’

‘She wants to go to my aunt’s. She lives in Brighton. My mum said we should get out while we can.’

‘Brighton? Where’s that?’

‘It’s south. Down by the sea. I went there once when I was little.’

‘Are you going then?’

‘My dad doesn’t want us to go.’

‘Oh. So are you going to stay?’

‘I guess so. Dad usually gets his own way. Has your mum spoken to you about it?’

‘No. I’m not sure how much she knows about what’s going on, to be honest. I guess I’m staying too. Here you go,’ I said, handing back the map.

‘You can have it, if you like. We can both fill it in. You can give it back to me tomorrow.’

‘OK,’ I said and I put the map in my pocket.

Neither of us could have known that we would not see each other tomorrow. Or the day after that. Or the day after that.

The very next day, they closed our school.

Most people were leaving.

I could see them going from my window.

There was a steady procession of people out on the pavements. They were carrying as much as they could, in brightly coloured bags, or dragging large suitcases behind them. All their belongings in the world.

I spent a long time checking through the line of people to see if I could see Gaia and her family among them.

I wondered if her dad had changed his mind and they were on their way to Brighton, right now, to her aunt’s house.

Or if her parents were fighting. Not able to agree over what they were going to do and Gaia and her brothers trying not to hear the shouting through the thin walls.

I had no way of telling. We didn’t have a phone at my house. Mum had a mobile but I didn’t know where she kept it.

I felt in my pocket for the map that Gaia had given me, and traced the numbered dots with my finger until I came to rest upon Gaia’s drawing of her block. I missed her.

I tried to shake the thought from my head that I might never see her again but it kept returning over and over in my mind, making me feel sick and panicky. The only thing that calmed me was turning over the map that Gaia had made in my hands. It was my last piece of her. I didn’t have any photographs, only the pictures in my head and the worn paper map I was holding.

I hoped that she had got out. I hoped that she had left her flat behind her and was far away from the piles of brick and rubble that made up our streets now. No one was safe in their homes any more. Bricks and walls and doors didn’t protect you any longer.

Perhaps she was already there. In Brighton. Down by the sea. I’d only seen the sea once when we went on a trip to the beach in Year Two and it had scared me a bit. It was so vast, so unending, stretching on and on until it met the sky. Gaia had held my hand as we waded into the shallow waters because I told her I was afraid, and she’d squeezed it tight as the first wave rolled in and splashed us right up to our waists. I screamed, I think, but I didn’t feel as worried with Gaia beside me.

I wished I was with Gaia again. Perhaps I could have gone with her family to Brighton and escaped as well.

I knew it was a good idea to get out, but the problem was, I just couldn’t go anywhere without Mum.

Michael’s mum came round a couple of days after our school shut and told me to pack up my things.

She marched into Mum’s bedroom and started shouting at her to get up. To save her son. To save herself. Mum looked right through Michael’s mum as if she hadn’t just been screamed at, and turned over on her side to go back to sleep.

Michael’s mum grabbed my wrist then and started half yelling at me. She said that I would go with them, that I would be safe then. She told me to pack some of my clothes, that she’d be back soon.

I closed the door behind her and locked it with the big key that we hardly ever use. I put the chain on as well. Then I pushed my chest of drawers in front of the door. It was too heavy for me to lift, so I had to move one side forward and then the other. It took me a while to move it like this, in little zigzags, but I got it there in the end. Just before Michael’s mum came back.

She really started yelling when she realized I wasn’t going to open the door. Even louder than she did at Mum.
Ade, Ade, Ade
. She kept saying my name over and over. I even heard Michael’s sister shouting my name. But it didn’t last for ever. And then I heard their footsteps fade away. They had left too.

I went out to buy some food from the shops after that. I knew it was dangerous but we were running out again and we had to eat.

I walked out of my tower, but before I turned towards the shops, I looked down the road to where Gaia’s block was standing. Was she still in there? I counted the windows up until I found the seventeenth floor and tried to see through the dark panes.

Maybe she was looking at me at this very same moment that I was looking towards her?

Just in case she was, I put my hand up and waved a little bit. Then I started to feel silly, so I stopped and started running down the road to the shop.

The one closest to us was closed, with the grey shutters pulled right down, so I had to go to a mini supermarket that was down the road.

There was no one else in the supermarket when I went round filling my basket and there were lots of things missing from the shelves. I decided to buy some chocolate biscuits as a treat, the type that are filled with white marshmallow, and remembered to get some toilet roll for us too.

The man who served me was very tall and looked quite nervous. He kept looking around us as if he thought that someone was going to jump out from behind the shelves at any minute. I filled up a couple of plastic bags and their handles dug into my hands, cutting bright pink lines into my skin. I’d only gone a few steps down the road when I saw that the sign on the door had been changed to
CLOSED
.

I’d only just got there in time.

The street was deserted, and all of a sudden I felt very alone. There weren’t many cars or buses on the roads either, which is very odd because usually the main road has a big traffic jam on it. People around here say it is the only thing you can really depend upon. You never know if the sun is going to shine or if the day is going to go your way but you know there’ll be a traffic jam, bumper to bumper, on the main road.

I didn’t like the empty-looking street.

I didn’t realize how much I liked the busyness of everything and how, without it, I felt more lonely. The bags of shopping were too heavy for me to be able to run, and walking felt slow and tiring. It made me play a secret game which I have never told anyone about, not even Gaia.

I imagine that I see an animal wandering behind me on the street.

Maybe it is hiding behind a dustbin or creeping round the corner. It could be any animal. I’ve had elephants, giraffes, horses and even rabbits in the past, although usually it is a dog or a cat. Sometimes the same one comes up, without me even thinking about it. There’s a black-and-white dog that often turns up, and a small tabby kitten that I’ve seen a few times.

I imagine that the animal is following me home, so every time I look round, I can see it there behind me. By the time I get back to my block, it comes up right next to me so it’s by my side, and then we walk up the stairs together to my flat. I always take the stairs on those days because it’s fun to imagine them running up in front of me and then waiting for me to catch up with them. Or balancing on the banister and then leaping down in front of me.

And I don’t think animals like the lift. It makes them feel like they are trapped.

Then, when we get back to my flat, I feed them their favourite food. I make this part up too, of course. I don’t put down real food or anything like that. Then I make them a bed for the night and that’s it.

I guess they are imaginary friends of sorts and that’s why I don’t tell anyone about them, because I don’t want people to think I am weird. I don’t talk to them or anything, other than in the normal way you might talk to any animal, like, ‘Here boy!’ or, ‘It’s OK, don’t be scared,’ or, ‘I won’t hurt you,’ but actually I do all the talking in my head, otherwise Mum might hear me and I’d wake her. The animals don’t really have names either.

And the other thing is that they are always gone in the morning. The first time it happened, I spent a long time looking for the creature everywhere, even under the bed and in the kitchen cupboards, just in case it got trapped or was lost somewhere, but it was nowhere to be found. I still spend a while looking for them in the morning each time, just in case. Perhaps one day, it’ll still be there when I wake up and I won’t feel that stab of sadness that I’m alone again.

That day, it was the black-and-white dog who strolled towards me, and because he knows me now, he gave my hand a lick and looked at me in that loving way dogs do. I was glad to see him. I gently stroked him from his eyes right to the back of his head, just the way he likes. As we walked together, he stuck close to me and I put my shopping bags into one hand and kept my other hand by my side, so I could feel his soft fur as we made our way back to the tower.

We didn’t meet anyone else on the way. At one point, he sniffed the air as if he could smell something, but then he carried on walking and soon enough we were back at my tower. We climbed the stairs to my flat, the dog bounding a few steps ahead of me all the way and then turning every once in a while to see where I was.

He slept at the bottom of my bed that night. I fell asleep more easily than I had done in a while with him there, and when I woke in the early morning, when it was still dark outside, he was still there, sleeping in the tight circle his body made.

But when I woke in the morning, with the sun streaming through my curtains, he’d gone. I thought I could see the indent his body had made in my duvet, which felt warm to touch, so maybe he’d only just left.

I didn’t spend as long looking for him this time. I knew in my heart that I was alone once more.

I’ve already told you about the TV crews that arrived, haven’t I? Well, lots more came after they closed my school.

It was funny seeing streets that I know on the television. They didn’t look right. They looked greyer and darker and smaller somehow.

Sometimes they interviewed people who lived nearby and they talked about how scared they were and they often said that they were packing up and leaving their homes.

‘You aren’t safe inside your home and you aren’t safe on the streets any more. There’s nowhere left to go,’ I remember one woman saying. She had a baby sitting on her hip the whole time she was talking, playing with her hair.

I always wondered if Gaia or her mum might suddenly appear on the television. Maybe they would tell me that they were leaving, so I would know for sure that they had gone and that Gaia would be safe.

I would always run back to the television if I could hear different voices other than the serious tones of the newsreaders to see if it was them. But they never turned up.

I spent a lot of time watching television because there wasn’t much else to do. Sometimes I dreamed I could hear Michael’s mum calling for me to walk to school and I would wake up with a start and think I needed to rush out, before I remembered that Michael’s mum had gone now and that school didn’t exist any more.