(no subject)
You Belong to Me, 1/?, AU/Crossover, Vamp!Rose/Ten, R
“You always threaten to assault inanimate objects, or just signage?” The girl cranes her neck to read the sign’s information. “It says, 'Watch for Children.' Does it mean you?” 3,675 w.
A/N: This fic is an adaption of the world created in the 2008 Swedish film, Let the Right One In. You do NOT have to know anything about the film's story line to follow my fic (although, you should see the film just because it's gorgeous). I follow that story's framework rather closely, however, I do jump off the jungle gym quite a bit. Writing the story I want to tell has led this to become a multi-chapter fic - I hope you enjoy it!
Here they come again
And they got you on the ground.
Tasting blood again;
At least it's your own.
When will you realize it doesn’t pay
To be smarter than teachers
Smarter than most boys …
~ “Lord Anthony,” Belle & Sebastian
Prologue
Poor sod.
It’s always the same; their first mistake is also their last --
They underestimate me.
’S true that I am a scrappy little slip of a twelve year-old girl - blonde to boot, yeah?
Size, Age, Sex: The Trinity of Dazzle Camouflage that enables me to walk through this world relatively unnoticed.
More truth: I am a killer of my own kind. Of course, by the time you figure that out, ’s usually too late.
This makes for a rather short list of friends, as you might imagine. I’ve had “helpers,” “companions,” “sympathisers” - whatever you wanna to call them - over the years who have gotten me out of tight spots and introduced me to the right sorts of people, when necessary.
Just like you, I once had a family … friends … people who I loved and who loved me, in return. They’re all dead, now. I haven’t mattered - really mattered - to anyone in so long, the thought burns more than my parched throat ever could (which is saying a lot). What I miss more than anything that’s been stripped away from me is that feeling of belonging to someone.
I never wanted this life, but it wasn’t my choice; it was chosen for me. The result being that I live among you, yet apart from you. Frankly, I’m rubbish on my own - hate it, really. We all need a hand to hold, even those of us living in the dark. Especially us.
I require blood to live.
I feed greedily, attempting to satisfy my craving for human contact as much as my physical thirst. The pulsing gush of blood, salty and rank, overwhelms me with its heat and familiarity. For one, brief moment, I can remember how my lost humanity had once felt, smelled and tasted.
It never lasts long enough; all I’m left with is what I came for.
I feel the speckled spray of blood that spatters my pale face and bare arms; it dribbles down my chin and pastes a saturated lock of my moon-bleached hair to my now, too-florid cheek. The gore of life flipped inside out, painted on the wrong side of my skin.
It almost feels like being alive.
Arms wrapped around my victim in a makeshift embrace, I stretch to reach inside his back pocket, to pluck out his wallet and thumb through it.
You can learn a lot about people by looking through their wallets. So much more than I.D. and bank accounts, it’s a window into their lives - pictures of family and friends, receipts for food they’ve eaten and for clothes they’ve purchased. Love notes and laundry lists and phone numbers that will never be called again.
I carry all of it - and all of them - with me, wherever I go. Lost years and lost lives stacked one on top of the other, pressing down and threatening to crush me with my own remorse and regret and loneliness.
Truth is, in the end, you just get tired.
“You’re the lucky one, mate,” I whisper in his ear before easing his lifeless body to the ground with a soft crunch, and walk away.
Forever is a really long time when you’re on your own.
- - -
Chapter 1
London, The Powell Estate, Early 1980’s.
- - -
Illuminated only by a small desk lamp, a boy sits holding a screwdriver in one hand and a crisp in the other. He munches contemplatively as he consults one of the five manuals he’s got spread open across his desk. He points the business end of the screwdriver at the manual to keep his place as he pops the crisp into his mouth and reaches into the bag for another.
Ignoring the can of soup his mum had left on the counter for him, the boy has, instead, chosen to eat half a bag of crisps, three packets of Maltesers and a pint of chocolate milk for his tea. He knows his mum will leave him an angry note when she discovers her favorite little malted milk balls have gone missing, but it’s every man for himself when she works the graveyard shift - which is most nights.
Mixed in with the detritus of junk food packets littering his work surface is a mix of scrap metal, dials and wires. His homework done ages ago, the boy is lost in one of his own projects. He knows it’s way past his bedtime, but he resists sleep. Because there’s no one there to stop him, he plugs in his soldering gun and keeps going.
He catches his reflection in the window. With his oversized safety goggles and shock of chestnut hair standing on end, he looks like the mad scientist he dreams of becoming.
“Hello …” he whispers to the boy in the glass. His reflection stares back solemnly, in condemning silence.
He realizes he hasn’t spoken to anyone, today - not at school, not to his mum … not to anyone. The last exchange he can remember sharing with someone took place the previous afternoon with his school’s dinner lady, when he asked her what the correct temperature is for frying fish fingers. Did that even count as conversation?
Picking up his soldering gun, he begins to explain his methodology out loud as he works, taking small comfort in the sound of his own voice.
At some point later, the boy hears a car pull up in front of his building. He’s lost track of time, just as he always does when tinkering with one of his projects. Since his mum isn’t home yet, he listens for any identifying sound. His mum never takes a taxi home from work, even if she’s been on the graveyard. He knows it’s an extravagance they can’t afford, but she tells him it’s just that the bus is good enough for her.
So, even though he knows it won’t be her, the boy still climbs up on top of his desk - if for no other reason than it’s something to do.
The boy pushes back his goggles on his head and cups his hands around his eyes, forehead pressed to the glass, to get a closer look at the small figure emerging from a taxi, three levels down.
A blonde girl his age, or perhaps slightly younger, is standing at the curb, softly kicking the base of a light post with her foot. He notices she doesn’t have a parka on, which is odd considering it’s both the middle of the night and February.
Last week, someone had stolen the boy’s parka from his gym locker and dunked it in a toilet; he’d nearly frozen walking home from school without it. It wasn’t nearly as cold then as it is tonight, he remarks to himself. In spite of being caught out in only jeans and a hoodie, he thinks she looks pretty nonplussed about it.
He watches as the girl does a slow spin with her arms pointed out, taking in the Estate, until she stops - like the arrow on a Wheel of Chance - to face the boy’s own building.
The boy, for reasons he does not know, quickly snaps off his desk lamp and continues to watch her.
Suddenly, the taxi’s other rear door opens and a man steps out. He opens the taxi’s boot and lifts out a large, and rather unwieldy-looking, steamer trunk. With his chin tucked into his chest, the man’s face is obscured in the shadows as he lumbers to the building’s entrance.
The girl turns to follow the man, but pauses, mid-stride, to look up. If the boy didn’t know any better, it seems like she can see him in the window - is looking right at him, in fact. The boy jumps back, leaping down from his desk to hide himself against the wall. Regaining his nerve, he peeks one eye out of the window to find the mysterious pair is no longer there. If he didn’t see the taxi pulling away into the night, the boy might’ve thought he had imagined them.
Not long after, the boy can hear muffled talking in the adjacent apartment. He can hear best if he kneels on his bed, with an ear pressed to the wall. Yawning, he strains to pick up any word in the conversation, without luck. Eventually, the need for sleep overtakes him and he drifts away, on top of his covers and still in his clothes.
- - -
He’s nearly made it back to the Estate when they find him, knocking him down from behind. One boy gives him a rough shove between the shoulder blades while another crams a foot into the tender hollow behind his left knee.
He is a slight boy, all sharp angles and impossibly long legs, worn by a body still adjusting to his last growth spurt. The others outweigh him by at least a stone; they use much more force than necessary, which, of course, is the point. His reactions are quick, though, and he manages to splay his long, slender fingers in front of him just in time to catch himself, softening his collapse to the sidewalk.
While attempting to stand, a different foot finds the nape of his neck and pushes him back down hard, flattening his cheek against the cold concrete. He squints to observe the trainer planted next to his nose while its partner is occupied, hovering at the base of his skull. He recognizes the trainers immediately; this isn’t the first time they’ve made each other’s acquaintance.
“Stay down, Worm,” the ringleader warns, pressing his foot further into the boy’s neck, for added emphasis. The boy winces slightly as his cheekbone grinds down, gravel pricking his face.
The ambush isn’t a surprise, really. More, it’s an inevitability that has become a regular part of his after-school routine, like buying chips with his money for tea, or doing his homework alone in the flat. He can’t remember a time when he wasn’t bullied at school, but in the last several months, there has been a marked increase in the attention paid to him. In spite of his best efforts to blend in, he never does.
The boy thinks he must just have that kind of face.
The leader barks an order and suddenly one of his lackeys is ripping the boy’s oversized rucksack from his back. He tries to resist, folding his thin arms tight against his body so that they must kick him to unwind the straps from his unwilling limbs.
“And what’ve we got today?” The sneer in the head bully’s voice evident. They turn his rucksack over onto the sidewalk, dumping his books and papers in a heap, while all sorts of little metal objects crash and skitter across the pavement. The ringleader picks up a larger, metal object; to the untrained eye, it is a senseless blob of wires and circuits. He removes his foot from the boy’s neck and squats next to him. He dangles the blob by one of its wires, swinging it like a pendulum in the boy’s face.
“What’s this for, Worm?”
“Nothing.” The boy tries to control his facial muscles; he doesn’t want to betray his mixture of anger and fear, or to let on that the piece of equipment means anything to him.
“I’m just curious,” the ringleader drips in a friendly, coaxing voice. “If you tell me what it is, I promise I’ll give it back to you.”
The boy hesitates. The bully lifts his free hand to the boy’s neck, to pick up where his foot left off. Still, he smiles and nods at the boy, encouraging him to speak.
“It’s … it’s a radio receiver.” He almost adds, I built it, but his inner voice warns against that.
"Yeah?” the bully says, seemingly interested.
He times his throw perfectly with the oncoming lorry, which smashes the receiver under its tires with a loud crunch.
“Now, it’s rubbish.”
The boy’s jaw tenses, but he doesn’t move. He simply watches from his street-level vantage point as other cars run over the bits of his pulverized receiver.
The bully yanks the boy by the hair, snapping his head back with a jerk. “Tell you what. Maybe next time we just throw you into the street - see what sound you make. Will the Worm go pop or squish? My bet’s on SQUISH!!” he crows viciously. He releases his grip on the boy’s hair and dramatically wipes his hand on his jeans, in pantomimed disgust.
The bullies kick the pile of schoolbooks, scattering the boy’s papers to the wind. They laugh and make squishing and farting noises as they stomp off together, leaving the boy to collect both himself and his things from the sidewalk, alone.
The boy stands at the edge of the road for a few minutes, hands shoved in his pockets and rocking on his heels, numbly staring as the oncoming traffic continues to catch and scatter his destroyed project. He is building a ham radio at home, and the receiver was going to be the best part. The boy likes the idea of sending his own messages out to be heard, but what excites him more is getting the chance to hear about far off places and talk to people from … everywhere.
In the end, it doesn’t matter. He can easily rebuild it - he has a knack for circuitry. It’s the residual shame of having been emasculated yet again by his classmates that is eating away at him. His desire to hit something is overwhelming. Instead, he pulls one hand from his pocket to tug at his own hair, to the point of pain.
With his other hand still stuffed in his brown corduroys, the boy’s fingers find and close upon a round, flat piece of metal deep in a pocket his tormentors hadn’t thought to search. The press of the cool metal against his palm always has a way of soothing him - reassuring him. For a moment, it feels like the thing trembles, but the boy explains it away as vibrations from the street, created by the pounding evening traffic.
Gathering his schoolbooks, his journal, a now-damaged library book about Ray Bradbury and the tattered remnants of the corresponding book report that will need to be recopied, the boy throws the lot back into his rucksack and slings it onto his back. The pack engulfs him, making him look even younger than he is.
With a sigh and what feels like the weight of the world on his back, the boy trudges off toward his empty flat to lick his wounds.
- - -
“Were you looking at me? Got something to say?” The boy asks, with more than a hint of danger in his voice. “Well, go on - say it!”
He doesn’t give his counterpart time to respond. He takes a step forward, leering at his victim. “What? Are you scared? Spineless twat! Get on the ground and crawl for me like the worm you are!”
It’s a quiet night on the Estate. Last week’s snowfall still blankets the courtyard, the icy top layer now tinged grey from motor exhaust and pollution. The snow has run everyone inside their flats - even the older teens that use the courtyard as a repository for their crushed beer cans and used condoms.
Tonight, it is just the Boy and his Nemesis.
Here it is - the tables have finally turned in my favor. Fighting back. Hitting first.
He feels kind of sick in his belly, because … secretly, he likes this. The boy thinks he might even like the sick feeling. He knows it isn’t right, but now that he’s started, he finds he doesn’t want to stop.
When his victim doesn’t immediately obey, the boy pulls out his screwdriver from his parka’s inner pocket and brandishes it, with a cool smile. Though his face is calm and controlled, the storm gathering behind his brown eyes is anything but. He stalks a slow and deft circle around his prey, never turning his back. The boy’s plimsolls sink deep into the courtyard’s snow, but if his feet are wet and cold, he doesn’t seem to notice.
“Are you deaf, or something? I. Said. Crawl. I don’t ask twice -” The boy takes another step forward, turning his wrist back and forth so that the steel in his hand glints in the light of the street lamp.
“What are you doing?”
The boy whips around to find a girl - the blonde girl from the taxi - standing on top of the courtyard’s jungle gym. How long had she been there? The boy quickly turns back to the victim of his verbal abuse: a wooden signpost at the edge of the play area, bearing the message: Powell Estate Est. 1963 - Watch Out for Children. His face is scarlet as he quickly draws his hand behind his back and turns around again to face her. Gone is all of the bravado he had, moments before.
“Nothing,” he says casually, though they both know it’s a lie. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” the girl volleys back, matching his tone.
“Do you live here?” the boy asks, changing the subject.
She looks at him like he’s from another planet. “I live right here, yeah? In the jungle gym,” she says, rolling her eyes at him.
“Seriously, where do you live?”
“Next door to you,” she says, pointing a thumb behind her to his building.
“How do you know where I live?”
She doesn’t answer him. Instead, the girl jumps from the top of the jungle gym to the ground, landing steady on her feet and without a sound. She walks toward him through the snow, slow and deliberate and watching him, intently.
As the girl approaches, she crosses under the streetlamp; the boy quickly takes in the details he couldn’t do when she was obscured by darkness.
She is a wild thing. The girl’s clothes look careworn and a bit dirty, and her hair - pale and golden in the lamplight - is tangled and streaming loose over her shoulders. Again, she isn’t wearing a coat, scarf or anything to protect her from the frigid night. He wonders if she is sleeping rough?
The girl comes to a stop when she’s just a meter away from him. The boy looks into her eyes - narrowed slightly under dark, knitted brows - and finds the opposite of wildness: he sees control - complete focus upon him. The boy feels a chill run through his body that has nothing to do with the snow or the night air.
Run, says the prickle at the nape of his neck.
Beautiful, his mind whispers back, in awe.
She startles him by suddenly launching into conversation.
“You always threaten to assault inanimate objects, or just signage?” The girl cranes her neck to read the sign’s information. “It says, 'Watch for Children.' Does it mean you?”
“No, of course not! I was just -” Flustered, the boy scrubs a hand through his hair. For whatever reason, this makes the girl smile at him. It’s the first time he’s seen her smile and he notices that her whole face changes. Lights up, he thinks. He notices that her hazel eyes have flecks of gold in them, like sparks.
“Give it here,” she demands, holding out her hand, palm up.
“What?”
The girl nods to the hand he has twisted behind his back. The boy feels heat spread across his face again; he imagines each of his freckles glowing, like Lite Brite pegs, to illustrate his embarrassment as he turns over his weapon to her.
The girl turns the screwdriver over in her hands. “Nice one,” she says admiringly.
“Er, thanks. It’s not just a screwdriver, though - it can do all sorts of things. See, the tip comes off, just there,” he instructs as his finger touches a seam. “The handle holds all the bits, and you just need to do a little, um … ”
“Jiggery-pokery?” she suggests with a sly, conspiratorial grin.
“Hm?” He mulls over the strange words, which actually fit … perfectly.
“Oh, yes, exactly!” Now, she has him grinning. “With a little … jiggery-pokery, you can use it for just about any job.” The girl chews her bottom lip - the corners of her mouth still upturned - as she raises her eyebrows at him.
“Sounds clever. But you’re clever, aren’t you?” She interjects, more statement than question. He isn’t sure if she’s having him.
Yes, I am, he thinks to himself. Outwardly, he merely stuffs his hands into his corduroy pockets and shrugs.
“But you’re alone.”
“I like it that way,” he challenges softly, jutting his chin out with a sniff.
“Do you?” She asks, pointedly. When the boy doesn’t answer, she adds, “Yeah, well, we shouldn’t be friends, anyway.”
“Why not?” The boy is surprised by the tangible disappointment he feels.
Tucking her hair behind her ear, the girl shrugs. “Does there need to be a reason?”
Who says I want to be your friend?
It’s on the tip of his tongue - he can be rude, too - but before he can form the words, the girl turns and begins to walk back toward their building. She pauses at the threshold and looks back at him.
“See ya,” she shouts softly over her shoulder, with a small, sad smile. Through the stairwell’s windows, he watches her small frame effortlessly take two steps at a time, until she reaches their floor.
Their floor, the boy thinks as he clucks his tongue against his teeth. He stands in the snow, looking up at her flat’s windows (newly covered over with paper, he notices), for a long time.
- - -
Only after he goes back into his own flat does the boy realize she’s kept his screwdriver.
- - -
Go To Chapter 2
“You always threaten to assault inanimate objects, or just signage?” The girl cranes her neck to read the sign’s information. “It says, 'Watch for Children.' Does it mean you?” 3,675 w.
A/N: This fic is an adaption of the world created in the 2008 Swedish film, Let the Right One In. You do NOT have to know anything about the film's story line to follow my fic (although, you should see the film just because it's gorgeous). I follow that story's framework rather closely, however, I do jump off the jungle gym quite a bit. Writing the story I want to tell has led this to become a multi-chapter fic - I hope you enjoy it!
Here they come again
And they got you on the ground.
Tasting blood again;
At least it's your own.
When will you realize it doesn’t pay
To be smarter than teachers
Smarter than most boys …
~ “Lord Anthony,” Belle & Sebastian
Prologue
Poor sod.
It’s always the same; their first mistake is also their last --
They underestimate me.
’S true that I am a scrappy little slip of a twelve year-old girl - blonde to boot, yeah?
Size, Age, Sex: The Trinity of Dazzle Camouflage that enables me to walk through this world relatively unnoticed.
More truth: I am a killer of my own kind. Of course, by the time you figure that out, ’s usually too late.
This makes for a rather short list of friends, as you might imagine. I’ve had “helpers,” “companions,” “sympathisers” - whatever you wanna to call them - over the years who have gotten me out of tight spots and introduced me to the right sorts of people, when necessary.
Just like you, I once had a family … friends … people who I loved and who loved me, in return. They’re all dead, now. I haven’t mattered - really mattered - to anyone in so long, the thought burns more than my parched throat ever could (which is saying a lot). What I miss more than anything that’s been stripped away from me is that feeling of belonging to someone.
I never wanted this life, but it wasn’t my choice; it was chosen for me. The result being that I live among you, yet apart from you. Frankly, I’m rubbish on my own - hate it, really. We all need a hand to hold, even those of us living in the dark. Especially us.
I require blood to live.
I feed greedily, attempting to satisfy my craving for human contact as much as my physical thirst. The pulsing gush of blood, salty and rank, overwhelms me with its heat and familiarity. For one, brief moment, I can remember how my lost humanity had once felt, smelled and tasted.
It never lasts long enough; all I’m left with is what I came for.
I feel the speckled spray of blood that spatters my pale face and bare arms; it dribbles down my chin and pastes a saturated lock of my moon-bleached hair to my now, too-florid cheek. The gore of life flipped inside out, painted on the wrong side of my skin.
It almost feels like being alive.
Arms wrapped around my victim in a makeshift embrace, I stretch to reach inside his back pocket, to pluck out his wallet and thumb through it.
You can learn a lot about people by looking through their wallets. So much more than I.D. and bank accounts, it’s a window into their lives - pictures of family and friends, receipts for food they’ve eaten and for clothes they’ve purchased. Love notes and laundry lists and phone numbers that will never be called again.
I carry all of it - and all of them - with me, wherever I go. Lost years and lost lives stacked one on top of the other, pressing down and threatening to crush me with my own remorse and regret and loneliness.
Truth is, in the end, you just get tired.
“You’re the lucky one, mate,” I whisper in his ear before easing his lifeless body to the ground with a soft crunch, and walk away.
Forever is a really long time when you’re on your own.
- - -
Chapter 1
London, The Powell Estate, Early 1980’s.
- - -
Illuminated only by a small desk lamp, a boy sits holding a screwdriver in one hand and a crisp in the other. He munches contemplatively as he consults one of the five manuals he’s got spread open across his desk. He points the business end of the screwdriver at the manual to keep his place as he pops the crisp into his mouth and reaches into the bag for another.
Ignoring the can of soup his mum had left on the counter for him, the boy has, instead, chosen to eat half a bag of crisps, three packets of Maltesers and a pint of chocolate milk for his tea. He knows his mum will leave him an angry note when she discovers her favorite little malted milk balls have gone missing, but it’s every man for himself when she works the graveyard shift - which is most nights.
Mixed in with the detritus of junk food packets littering his work surface is a mix of scrap metal, dials and wires. His homework done ages ago, the boy is lost in one of his own projects. He knows it’s way past his bedtime, but he resists sleep. Because there’s no one there to stop him, he plugs in his soldering gun and keeps going.
He catches his reflection in the window. With his oversized safety goggles and shock of chestnut hair standing on end, he looks like the mad scientist he dreams of becoming.
“Hello …” he whispers to the boy in the glass. His reflection stares back solemnly, in condemning silence.
He realizes he hasn’t spoken to anyone, today - not at school, not to his mum … not to anyone. The last exchange he can remember sharing with someone took place the previous afternoon with his school’s dinner lady, when he asked her what the correct temperature is for frying fish fingers. Did that even count as conversation?
Picking up his soldering gun, he begins to explain his methodology out loud as he works, taking small comfort in the sound of his own voice.
At some point later, the boy hears a car pull up in front of his building. He’s lost track of time, just as he always does when tinkering with one of his projects. Since his mum isn’t home yet, he listens for any identifying sound. His mum never takes a taxi home from work, even if she’s been on the graveyard. He knows it’s an extravagance they can’t afford, but she tells him it’s just that the bus is good enough for her.
So, even though he knows it won’t be her, the boy still climbs up on top of his desk - if for no other reason than it’s something to do.
The boy pushes back his goggles on his head and cups his hands around his eyes, forehead pressed to the glass, to get a closer look at the small figure emerging from a taxi, three levels down.
A blonde girl his age, or perhaps slightly younger, is standing at the curb, softly kicking the base of a light post with her foot. He notices she doesn’t have a parka on, which is odd considering it’s both the middle of the night and February.
Last week, someone had stolen the boy’s parka from his gym locker and dunked it in a toilet; he’d nearly frozen walking home from school without it. It wasn’t nearly as cold then as it is tonight, he remarks to himself. In spite of being caught out in only jeans and a hoodie, he thinks she looks pretty nonplussed about it.
He watches as the girl does a slow spin with her arms pointed out, taking in the Estate, until she stops - like the arrow on a Wheel of Chance - to face the boy’s own building.
The boy, for reasons he does not know, quickly snaps off his desk lamp and continues to watch her.
Suddenly, the taxi’s other rear door opens and a man steps out. He opens the taxi’s boot and lifts out a large, and rather unwieldy-looking, steamer trunk. With his chin tucked into his chest, the man’s face is obscured in the shadows as he lumbers to the building’s entrance.
The girl turns to follow the man, but pauses, mid-stride, to look up. If the boy didn’t know any better, it seems like she can see him in the window - is looking right at him, in fact. The boy jumps back, leaping down from his desk to hide himself against the wall. Regaining his nerve, he peeks one eye out of the window to find the mysterious pair is no longer there. If he didn’t see the taxi pulling away into the night, the boy might’ve thought he had imagined them.
Not long after, the boy can hear muffled talking in the adjacent apartment. He can hear best if he kneels on his bed, with an ear pressed to the wall. Yawning, he strains to pick up any word in the conversation, without luck. Eventually, the need for sleep overtakes him and he drifts away, on top of his covers and still in his clothes.
- - -
He’s nearly made it back to the Estate when they find him, knocking him down from behind. One boy gives him a rough shove between the shoulder blades while another crams a foot into the tender hollow behind his left knee.
He is a slight boy, all sharp angles and impossibly long legs, worn by a body still adjusting to his last growth spurt. The others outweigh him by at least a stone; they use much more force than necessary, which, of course, is the point. His reactions are quick, though, and he manages to splay his long, slender fingers in front of him just in time to catch himself, softening his collapse to the sidewalk.
While attempting to stand, a different foot finds the nape of his neck and pushes him back down hard, flattening his cheek against the cold concrete. He squints to observe the trainer planted next to his nose while its partner is occupied, hovering at the base of his skull. He recognizes the trainers immediately; this isn’t the first time they’ve made each other’s acquaintance.
“Stay down, Worm,” the ringleader warns, pressing his foot further into the boy’s neck, for added emphasis. The boy winces slightly as his cheekbone grinds down, gravel pricking his face.
The ambush isn’t a surprise, really. More, it’s an inevitability that has become a regular part of his after-school routine, like buying chips with his money for tea, or doing his homework alone in the flat. He can’t remember a time when he wasn’t bullied at school, but in the last several months, there has been a marked increase in the attention paid to him. In spite of his best efforts to blend in, he never does.
The boy thinks he must just have that kind of face.
The leader barks an order and suddenly one of his lackeys is ripping the boy’s oversized rucksack from his back. He tries to resist, folding his thin arms tight against his body so that they must kick him to unwind the straps from his unwilling limbs.
“And what’ve we got today?” The sneer in the head bully’s voice evident. They turn his rucksack over onto the sidewalk, dumping his books and papers in a heap, while all sorts of little metal objects crash and skitter across the pavement. The ringleader picks up a larger, metal object; to the untrained eye, it is a senseless blob of wires and circuits. He removes his foot from the boy’s neck and squats next to him. He dangles the blob by one of its wires, swinging it like a pendulum in the boy’s face.
“What’s this for, Worm?”
“Nothing.” The boy tries to control his facial muscles; he doesn’t want to betray his mixture of anger and fear, or to let on that the piece of equipment means anything to him.
“I’m just curious,” the ringleader drips in a friendly, coaxing voice. “If you tell me what it is, I promise I’ll give it back to you.”
The boy hesitates. The bully lifts his free hand to the boy’s neck, to pick up where his foot left off. Still, he smiles and nods at the boy, encouraging him to speak.
“It’s … it’s a radio receiver.” He almost adds, I built it, but his inner voice warns against that.
"Yeah?” the bully says, seemingly interested.
He times his throw perfectly with the oncoming lorry, which smashes the receiver under its tires with a loud crunch.
“Now, it’s rubbish.”
The boy’s jaw tenses, but he doesn’t move. He simply watches from his street-level vantage point as other cars run over the bits of his pulverized receiver.
The bully yanks the boy by the hair, snapping his head back with a jerk. “Tell you what. Maybe next time we just throw you into the street - see what sound you make. Will the Worm go pop or squish? My bet’s on SQUISH!!” he crows viciously. He releases his grip on the boy’s hair and dramatically wipes his hand on his jeans, in pantomimed disgust.
The bullies kick the pile of schoolbooks, scattering the boy’s papers to the wind. They laugh and make squishing and farting noises as they stomp off together, leaving the boy to collect both himself and his things from the sidewalk, alone.
The boy stands at the edge of the road for a few minutes, hands shoved in his pockets and rocking on his heels, numbly staring as the oncoming traffic continues to catch and scatter his destroyed project. He is building a ham radio at home, and the receiver was going to be the best part. The boy likes the idea of sending his own messages out to be heard, but what excites him more is getting the chance to hear about far off places and talk to people from … everywhere.
In the end, it doesn’t matter. He can easily rebuild it - he has a knack for circuitry. It’s the residual shame of having been emasculated yet again by his classmates that is eating away at him. His desire to hit something is overwhelming. Instead, he pulls one hand from his pocket to tug at his own hair, to the point of pain.
With his other hand still stuffed in his brown corduroys, the boy’s fingers find and close upon a round, flat piece of metal deep in a pocket his tormentors hadn’t thought to search. The press of the cool metal against his palm always has a way of soothing him - reassuring him. For a moment, it feels like the thing trembles, but the boy explains it away as vibrations from the street, created by the pounding evening traffic.
Gathering his schoolbooks, his journal, a now-damaged library book about Ray Bradbury and the tattered remnants of the corresponding book report that will need to be recopied, the boy throws the lot back into his rucksack and slings it onto his back. The pack engulfs him, making him look even younger than he is.
With a sigh and what feels like the weight of the world on his back, the boy trudges off toward his empty flat to lick his wounds.
- - -
“Were you looking at me? Got something to say?” The boy asks, with more than a hint of danger in his voice. “Well, go on - say it!”
He doesn’t give his counterpart time to respond. He takes a step forward, leering at his victim. “What? Are you scared? Spineless twat! Get on the ground and crawl for me like the worm you are!”
It’s a quiet night on the Estate. Last week’s snowfall still blankets the courtyard, the icy top layer now tinged grey from motor exhaust and pollution. The snow has run everyone inside their flats - even the older teens that use the courtyard as a repository for their crushed beer cans and used condoms.
Tonight, it is just the Boy and his Nemesis.
Here it is - the tables have finally turned in my favor. Fighting back. Hitting first.
He feels kind of sick in his belly, because … secretly, he likes this. The boy thinks he might even like the sick feeling. He knows it isn’t right, but now that he’s started, he finds he doesn’t want to stop.
When his victim doesn’t immediately obey, the boy pulls out his screwdriver from his parka’s inner pocket and brandishes it, with a cool smile. Though his face is calm and controlled, the storm gathering behind his brown eyes is anything but. He stalks a slow and deft circle around his prey, never turning his back. The boy’s plimsolls sink deep into the courtyard’s snow, but if his feet are wet and cold, he doesn’t seem to notice.
“Are you deaf, or something? I. Said. Crawl. I don’t ask twice -” The boy takes another step forward, turning his wrist back and forth so that the steel in his hand glints in the light of the street lamp.
“What are you doing?”
The boy whips around to find a girl - the blonde girl from the taxi - standing on top of the courtyard’s jungle gym. How long had she been there? The boy quickly turns back to the victim of his verbal abuse: a wooden signpost at the edge of the play area, bearing the message: Powell Estate Est. 1963 - Watch Out for Children. His face is scarlet as he quickly draws his hand behind his back and turns around again to face her. Gone is all of the bravado he had, moments before.
“Nothing,” he says casually, though they both know it’s a lie. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” the girl volleys back, matching his tone.
“Do you live here?” the boy asks, changing the subject.
She looks at him like he’s from another planet. “I live right here, yeah? In the jungle gym,” she says, rolling her eyes at him.
“Seriously, where do you live?”
“Next door to you,” she says, pointing a thumb behind her to his building.
“How do you know where I live?”
She doesn’t answer him. Instead, the girl jumps from the top of the jungle gym to the ground, landing steady on her feet and without a sound. She walks toward him through the snow, slow and deliberate and watching him, intently.
As the girl approaches, she crosses under the streetlamp; the boy quickly takes in the details he couldn’t do when she was obscured by darkness.
She is a wild thing. The girl’s clothes look careworn and a bit dirty, and her hair - pale and golden in the lamplight - is tangled and streaming loose over her shoulders. Again, she isn’t wearing a coat, scarf or anything to protect her from the frigid night. He wonders if she is sleeping rough?
The girl comes to a stop when she’s just a meter away from him. The boy looks into her eyes - narrowed slightly under dark, knitted brows - and finds the opposite of wildness: he sees control - complete focus upon him. The boy feels a chill run through his body that has nothing to do with the snow or the night air.
Run, says the prickle at the nape of his neck.
Beautiful, his mind whispers back, in awe.
She startles him by suddenly launching into conversation.
“You always threaten to assault inanimate objects, or just signage?” The girl cranes her neck to read the sign’s information. “It says, 'Watch for Children.' Does it mean you?”
“No, of course not! I was just -” Flustered, the boy scrubs a hand through his hair. For whatever reason, this makes the girl smile at him. It’s the first time he’s seen her smile and he notices that her whole face changes. Lights up, he thinks. He notices that her hazel eyes have flecks of gold in them, like sparks.
“Give it here,” she demands, holding out her hand, palm up.
“What?”
The girl nods to the hand he has twisted behind his back. The boy feels heat spread across his face again; he imagines each of his freckles glowing, like Lite Brite pegs, to illustrate his embarrassment as he turns over his weapon to her.
The girl turns the screwdriver over in her hands. “Nice one,” she says admiringly.
“Er, thanks. It’s not just a screwdriver, though - it can do all sorts of things. See, the tip comes off, just there,” he instructs as his finger touches a seam. “The handle holds all the bits, and you just need to do a little, um … ”
“Jiggery-pokery?” she suggests with a sly, conspiratorial grin.
“Hm?” He mulls over the strange words, which actually fit … perfectly.
“Oh, yes, exactly!” Now, she has him grinning. “With a little … jiggery-pokery, you can use it for just about any job.” The girl chews her bottom lip - the corners of her mouth still upturned - as she raises her eyebrows at him.
“Sounds clever. But you’re clever, aren’t you?” She interjects, more statement than question. He isn’t sure if she’s having him.
Yes, I am, he thinks to himself. Outwardly, he merely stuffs his hands into his corduroy pockets and shrugs.
“But you’re alone.”
“I like it that way,” he challenges softly, jutting his chin out with a sniff.
“Do you?” She asks, pointedly. When the boy doesn’t answer, she adds, “Yeah, well, we shouldn’t be friends, anyway.”
“Why not?” The boy is surprised by the tangible disappointment he feels.
Tucking her hair behind her ear, the girl shrugs. “Does there need to be a reason?”
Who says I want to be your friend?
It’s on the tip of his tongue - he can be rude, too - but before he can form the words, the girl turns and begins to walk back toward their building. She pauses at the threshold and looks back at him.
“See ya,” she shouts softly over her shoulder, with a small, sad smile. Through the stairwell’s windows, he watches her small frame effortlessly take two steps at a time, until she reaches their floor.
Their floor, the boy thinks as he clucks his tongue against his teeth. He stands in the snow, looking up at her flat’s windows (newly covered over with paper, he notices), for a long time.
- - -
Only after he goes back into his own flat does the boy realize she’s kept his screwdriver.
- - -
Go To Chapter 2