LITMIR.BIZ

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of rubbish gets dumped. Mum’s had to go down a few times cos of a fallen cow.’

      So we headed across the lane to the fields and orchard, in the direction of the old railway line – a long road cut into the hillside, leading from Brynstan Bay through the interconnecting villages, and on towards Bristol. We used to race our bikes down there as kids. The big attraction was the Witch’s Pool but you had to go miles down the track to get to it. There was an old railway tunnel halfway along the Cloud section of the line; we used to race through it at top speed, pretending a witch lived in the darkest part. If we went too slowly, there was a danger she’d reach out her bony fingers and grab us, dragging us screaming to our deaths. Zane was the most scared of all of us – I’d never seen anyone ride a bike as fast as him.

      Past a chicken coop and a pen where four silky black goats were chomping on large heads of lettuce, we came to a rickety barn. Inside it, behind a mountain of hay bales, was a stash of small brown bottles. Each had a label on the front that read ‘Acid Rain’.

      ‘Mum’s home brew,’ said Fallon. ‘We’ve got a ton of the stuff. Help yourselves.’

      Max grabbed four bottles, and Corey put two in his bag of sweets from the Pier. I didn’t take any, and Fallon said she preferred Capri-Suns. I couldn’t work out if she was joking.

      Fallon had grown up in a different way to us three. She hadn’t grown up in the town like we had, so she was quite oblivious to a lot of the things we said, some of our slang. I almost envied her, a child wearing teenage skin that was never going to fit. I wanted to ask her if she had kept my secret, but I couldn’t with the boys around. It was too much to hope she’d forgotten all about it.

      Max pulled his phone out of his pocket to check the time. Along with it came a small see-through bag, with a clump of what looked like dried grass. I’d seen it before. He’d dropped it at the garden centre the other night. I was first to reach it this time.

      ‘What’s this?’ I said, handing it back to him.

      ‘Nothing. Just a bit of weed.’

      ‘Weed? You mean, drugs?’

      ‘Keep your voice down, or they’ll want some.’

      Still processing his answer, I followed Fallon through the orchard and across a field into the mottled darkness of the forest, making our way down a dirt track veined with tree roots. On either side of the track, the forest grew thinner and the pale yellow fields grew thicker. I scratched my now burning neck all over. I hadn’t realised how annoyed I’d become.

      ‘Can’t you take a pill or summing?’ said Max.

      ‘Like you, you mean?’ I snipped.

      ‘What?’

      ‘Nothing.’

      ‘Oh, I get it. You’re pissed I didn’t tell you about the weed.’

      ‘Yeah, all right, I am. I know everything about you, Max. I know that still sleep with the same Buddy Bear that your nan bought you when you were born.’

      ‘Ssh,’ he said, looking back for the others, but they were way behind us now.

      ‘I know you love tomatoes but hate ketchup. I know where you got every single bracelet on your wrist, cos I was with you when you got them all. I know you still use the peach shampoo Jessica used to like. I even know why that little tuft of hair won’t grow at the base of your neck. So why don’t I know you do drugs?’

      ‘It’s not like it’s heroin, Ells; just a bit of skunk. It’s no big deal.’

      ‘You said weed, now it’s skunk? Isn’t that the strongest one?’

      ‘Nah, it’s cool. It relaxes me. Seriously. Don’t sweat it.’

      ‘But people have gone mad on that, Max. Like, proper schiz. Are you high right now?’

      ‘Stop making such a big deal out of it! It’s nothing. I just didn’t tell you cos I knew you’d get a hair up your ass about it.’

      ‘How often?’ I asked.

      He was getting antsy. ‘Just a few spliffs now and again.’

      ‘What does that mean?’

      ‘Oh for God’s sake, just now and again, all right? A couple of spliffs in the morning. A shottie or summing before I go to bed. It helps me sleep.’

      I couldn’t believe what he was saying. I was waiting for him to smile and say he was joking. But he didn’t.

      ‘You should try it. Might loosen you up a bit.’ He swigged from his Acid Rain bottle – the final straw.

      ‘God, you are being the biggest arsehole today!’

      ‘No, I just meant to relax you. I didn’t mean…’

      As I barged past him, he threw me a look like I’d taken his Buddy Bear and given him a bundle of barbed wire to cuddle.

      The descent through the long grasses stopped at thick walls of leaves, and the long grey road of the Strawberry Line. The trains that used to run along there had taken strawberries and cheese to Bristol, and beyond. Now the tracks were gone and all the way along was an overgrown archway of trees and hedges, broken up in one direction by a huge black arc – the tunnel. A jogger huffed past and two cyclists were mere dots on the horizon. Apart from a dog walker with four elderly shih-tzus, we four were alone. We started walking, Fallon and Corey chattering away like old friends. Max was swigging Acid Rain, and I was ignoring him.

      ‘Pete jogs down here,’ I said. There was a definite eye roll from Max but I didn’t draw attention to it. ‘I’ve done some sprints along here too, at West Brynstan where the bend is.’

      ‘Who’s faster, you or Pete?’ asked Corey,

      ‘Oh Pete of course,’ Max butted in. ‘Pete’s good at everything. You should see him curing lepers.’ He sniggered and swigged at his bottle. I gave him the stink eye but he was ignoring me this time.

      The air became colder as we reached the mouth of the tunnel; the smell of the limestone took me straight back in time. The slimy feel of the walls at the darkest point – the drip of rock water on my hair – all gave me a familiar thrill.

      A little way along, Corey called out ‘Oh my God’ and it echoed around us. He’d seen a group of cats, all crowded around the carcass of a dead rabbit. As soon as they saw the torch, they began to scatter; some running back the way we’d come, others straight on into the tunnel.

      ‘I told you there were cats down here,’ said Fallon. ‘Was any of them Mort, Corey?’

      ‘No,’ he called back, his voice sounding strangled.

      ‘You really love Mort, don’t you?’

      Corey sniffed. ‘He means a lot to me. I found him in a skip. He was only a few days old. I took him home and stayed up all night, giving him milk, keeping him warm. Granddad said I could only keep him if I laid out for all his food. So I did. He was my reason.’

      None of us asked what Corey meant by that. I think we all just knew.

      All of a sudden, there was chaos behind us. We looked back into the darkness to see four figures on bikes, all hollering. As they got nearer, I realised they were just kids. But they were shouting abuse – mostly at Fallon.

      I couldn’t make out all of what they were shouting, but the odd phrase was clear. All right, retard? How’s your goats doing, Fallon? Hey, ugly girl! Butterface! Two boys and two girls, all younger than us. The eldest boy, no more than twelve, waggled his tongue at her as his bike sailed past. It was all over in seconds.

      ‘Who were they?’ said Max as the whoops died away in the distance.

      ‘Oh, just the Shaws. The boys go to that posh private school over in the next village. They’re idiots. They shaved a couple of our goats over Easter. And they write things

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