8. Crow
CHAPTER EIGHT
CROW
Study leave was meant to start today. Time off to revise for our exams, a final day in school filled with assemblies and celebrations and certificates and random people signing your shirt.
It’s the day, the one I was looking forward to and dreading the most. This was meant to be the dividing point.
Not a random afternoon with no ceremony.
So tonight we are having our own ceremony. We’re wearing our school shirts; Starling is bringing permanent markers. We’ll create our own last day.
Mum is snoring while I gather my things together.
She always leaves her bedroom door ajar, says she likes to be aware of what’s going on in case there’s a burglar, but she’s dead to the world.
A burglar could come in and dance around the place, and she wouldn’t hear a peep.
Still, though, I’m quiet. I sling my backpack over one shoulder, my purse and a bottle of water inside, and then delicately take my keys into my hands, preventing my key chains from jingling.
Our flat is tiny, so I cross the short distance from my bedroom to the stairs in seconds, leftover chip fat stench still lingering.
Living above a fish and chip shop has some benefits; we get a discount and know the people who run it well.
But there are negatives too. The smell never really goes away, as is evident by the fact they haven’t been operating for weeks and it’s still here.
I’m always conscious of it, douse myself with endless body sprays to try and hide it when it must follow me round too, like how cigarette smoke clings to smokers.
The biggest negative of all is how embarrassing it is.
We used to live in a proper house: three bedrooms, garden, and everything.
It was on a nice street, and I remember playing with the neighbors.
Then Mum and Dad divorced, and Dad forgot he had a daughter, and Mum and I had to move here, where there are no gardens, only a street of shops and night after night of drunk people outside yelling.
Lockdown has improved that at least. There is silence at night and during the day.
It hasn’t removed the shame of it though.
I’ll never let the others come round. I pretend it’s too far, but really, I don’t want them seeing any of this.
The torn-up carpet on the way down the stairs to the front door, the haphazard pile of shoes at the bottom.
The boarded-up glass on one of the window panels because some guy kicked it in a couple of years ago and we’ve never got round to mending it.
The alley straight outside with our old furniture lying there, a narrow cut through to the bins round the back of the shops and a place people use to pee, so the smell of fish and chips is sometimes overridden by rotting food and piss.
The main road itself is normally packed, but it’s somewhere most people wouldn’t feel comfortable walking alone at night.
And it doesn’t matter that everyone who lives here is super friendly and every shop owner gives me a smile when I go by.
It’s how it looks on the outside that matters. I don’t belong in a place like this.
I’m last to meet the others. They’re waiting for me in the city center. More risky, out in a public place like this, but more exciting too. I can’t believe I’m thinking that. Me, excited by being daring. I don’t know what’s come over me.
But we deserve it, don’t we, after how we’ve been treated? After what we’re having to create for ourselves?
“You’re late,” Cuckoo says predictably. Everyone is in their uniform; Starling has the pens at the ready. “Isn’t this mad, town being empty?”
We head toward the center, turning onto the long street with Primark and Burger King, our usual haunts, everything dark and abandoned.
The shops have their shutters pulled down, as they normally would at this time, but there’s something more permanent about it.
The streets are surprisingly clean, with none of the regular litter thrown about.
And there is no one around, in the distance or otherwise.
We head back in the opposite direction of Primark, walking down Rupert Street to reach the Bristol Hippodrome and the fountains in front of it.
“Switched off,” Cuckoo says, disappointed. “I was hoping we could put bubble bath in them like we’ve seen so many times before.”
“Bubble bath!” Goldie laughs. “To think we were so good. Look at us now.”
It is funny. We were those girls, the ones in every school.
Well-behaved, the favorites of teachers, our reports a never-ending stream of Excels, A Joy to Teach, Working So Hard.
We never got detentions, were trusted to be unsupervised on occasion.
If a teacher had to leave the room, one of us was put in charge for that brief period.
We were the ones sat next to misbehaving boys or struggling students, and we always said yes to any request with a smile, pride in our good reputation.
It was the deal though, wasn’t it? Work hard at school, be nice, and the fun can come afterward. All our efforts would be rewarded.
We’re taking what we’re owed.
Cuckoo shrugs. Her eyes are tired, I notice, from our late nights, tinges of purple underneath them. “Never mind. We can still celebrate our true final day at school! Starling, give us that red marker. Who wants their shirt signed first?”
“Me!” I volunteer.
Cuckoo’s on me in a second, scrawling into my back, the shapes familiar at first and then strange.
“What is it you’re doing?” I say. “You’re not spoiling it already, are you?”
“Cheek! I’ve drawn you a cuckoo next to my name. I’m pretty proud of it, actually.”
“Sign me next!” Goldie says.
“We can all sign each other,” Starling says, and hands us each a different colored pen.
We’re all at it then, carefully scribbling onto each other. And when we’ve finished our own names, Cuckoo writes something else on Goldie’s back that makes us screech with laughter.
“What is it?” she says. “Cuckoo, what have you done?”
“To my darling,” Cuckoo reads, in a deep male voice. “Now we can finally be together. Yours, Mr. Brody.”
“Cuckoo! I can’t believe you wrote that!”
“Why not?” she chuckles. “We can do whatever the hell we want.”
“I’m going to write one from Stacey Fulham on Wren,” Goldie says. “Saying she’s always been jealous of her.”
Wren blushes, but she’s smiling. “As if.”
But each new fake addition makes us all laugh, and soon we’re adding everyone we can think of, even celebrities and The Queen.
Starling begs for Hayden Trent’s name and then a list of serial killers.
Soon we’re grabbing each other for support to suppress our giggles, shirts covered every inch with colorful ink of the craziest names imaginable.
It would have been nice to have a real last day.
But maybe this is even better.
We’re having so much fun we stop worrying about what’s around us. And we don’t notice Starling gasp, stand bolt upright. Her face has turned white, and she raises a shaking arm, pointing behind us. “Is that a policeman?”
A policeman?
Cold terror drenches me and everyone else. The laughter dies in an instant.
We turn to look at where Starling is pointing. Up ahead, easy to see in his high-vis uniform, is a police officer, coming from the direction of College Green and about to spot us.
“Shit!” Cuckoo says. “Hide!”
“Where?” Wren cries.
We are in a wide-open space. Our only option is to hide behind the large pillars that flank the fountains.
Normally lit up with neon lights, they are as dark as everything else, though they’re too small for us all to fit behind one.
Starling and I run to the nearest, while Wren and Goldie crouch behind the one next to us, and Cuckoo hides two pillars away.
“If he spots us,” Starling whispers, “we’re done for.”
“Cuckoo could have run away,” I murmur. “She’s not as unfit as the rest of us.”
We are book girls. We do not do sports. Cuckoo is the exception, because of course she is.
She wins the school’s cross-country race every year and always comes first in sports day races.
It feels like an affront to feminism to squeal or cower whenever a football is launched in my direction, but I am hopeless.
I get out of breath running for ten seconds; there’s no way this officer wouldn’t catch me immediately.
Hiding is our best option, but we have to stay aware, circle round the pillar if he approaches at the wrong angle.
Which he might well do. The police officer does not carry on walking down the road in front of the hippodrome. He crosses it, heading straight toward us.
“Oh no,” Starling says. “Have you seen some of the fines people are getting? There’s no way any of us could afford that.”
I tune her out, peering around the pillar at the policeman.
He is oblivious to us for now. He is tall and muscular, but too far away for me to make out any discernible features.
He has his hands in his pockets, and he walks with the confidence of being unseen.
Is this what it is like to be a man all alone in the dead of night?
Or is it because he has authority? He reaches his hands out from his pockets, cracks his knuckles.
And then, just when I think he is walking on by and we are fine, he stops, turning to look in our direction.
Immediately, I duck behind the pillar.
“Did he see you?” Starling asks, and I mime at her to shut up, gesture furiously at the others that they need to stay hidden. If I can see them, he might be able to. Wren’s face, white and terrified, disappears behind her pillar. Starling is persistent though. “Is he coming?”
“Starling,” I whisper. “Be quiet.”
Everything is going to be fine. Everything is going to be fine.
I can’t risk another look. He is closer; I can hear him now. Footsteps heavy on the ground, a whistle under his breath.
Then the worst happens: a noise. Whatever it is, if I can hear it from here, so can the police officer. And he does. The whistling ceases; his footsteps grind to a halt.
“Is someone there?” he shouts. His tone is serious. He means business.
Starling’s eyes widen. She mouths silently, What do we do?
He is coming toward us. I hear the thud of his boots.
But then, unbelievably, from that farthest pillar, Cuckoo takes off into a run.
“Hey!” the police officer yells. “Come here!”
He fumbles around with something, swearing, then runs after her. She has had a head start, the element of surprise. She’s already disappearing round a corner, and it takes him time to turn that corner too and vanish with her.
“What is she playing at?” Starling gasps.
“She’s saving us, you idiot,” Goldie says, stepping out from behind her pillar. “That was my fault. I stepped backward and stumbled over Wren.”
“Will she get away?” Wren is staring after where Cuckoo and the police officer went.
“It’s Cuckoo,” Goldie says. “She always manages to think of something. Now come on, let’s get out of here in case backup arrives.”
By the time we’re out of the city center, past the Bearpit and back toward Starling’s house, we’re breathless. We weren’t able to run the whole way, but even walking fast has us reaching for our sides. And yet we made it. Cuckoo saved us.
“I can’t believe that happened,” I say.
“Do you think Cuckoo’s alright?” Wren asks, biting her lip. It makes me notice her front teeth, which are slightly too big and give her the appearance of a rabbit in human form.
“She’ll be fine,” Goldie answers firmly. Despite the fact we’ve been running and the rest of us are red-faced and slicked with sweat, she looks as immaculate as ever, cheeks only slightly tinged with pink.
“We actually outmaneuvered a police officer,” Starling says, amazed.
“Imagine if people at school could see this.” Goldie grins.
I let the thought of their shocked faces warm me. “They’d never believe it.”
“We’re underestimated,” Starling says. She brushes her unruly ginger curls from her face, grinning. “That’s why.”
“Well,” I say. “Look at us now.”
Later, when I arrive home, there’s a message on the group chat waiting for me. It’s Cuckoo, who has managed to get back before any of us.
You’re welcome bitches!
She did it.
We did it.
Wow. I start laughing again, catch sight of myself in the mirror, at all the colorful names on my shirt. It’s incredible.
I can’t believe we never realized how fun it is to break the rules.