Boy in the Tower (6 page)

The screen flashed to a man standing in front of the debris of a fallen building. It was the one Gaia and I had been standing in front of only a few hours ago.

I dropped my fork and it made a loud clanging sound as it hit my plate.

‘Thanks, Kathy. I’m standing just across the street from where the two council workers were discovered at about seven o’clock this evening. They have been identified as Richard Leighton and Frank Stewart. Both men were examining the rubble left when the warehouse collapsed, and the alarm was raised when neither man returned home earlier this evening. We do not know what went on here tonight, but the police have cordoned off this entire area, as you can see behind me. Their deaths are being treated as suspicious.’

Two large photos of the men filled the screen. They were both smiling. One of them had laughter lines round his eyes and rosy red cheeks. The other looked younger and had pale skin and light yellow hair.

I recognized them straight away.

They were the men in the yellow hard hats Gaia and I had walked past earlier that day.

The news went on and on about the two men all night. Suddenly the danger was greater. These two men hadn’t been in a collapsed building; they’d died because of something else. Some people were saying that this might not have anything to do with what had happened with the buildings, that it could just be a coincidence that they’d died where a building had fallen. Until they’d done something called a post mortem, no one would know anything for sure.

That didn’t stop them from talking about it, though.

I didn’t put the lights on, so the room was lit up by the television. I stayed up late watching it even though there wasn’t anything they could really tell us; they just kept saying the same kind of things over and over.

It was the same as with the buildings.

No one could explain why it was happening.

I went to find Gaia as soon as I got to school the next morning. She was sitting underneath the sunflowers. We had just a little time before they would blow the whistle to line up.

She looked tired, like she hadn’t been to sleep much the night before.

‘Gaia, did you see the news?’ I said. ‘Did you see what happened to those two men we saw?’

‘Yes, I saw it,’ she said, but she didn’t say anything more.

‘Why do you think they died?’

Gaia didn’t say anything.

‘Do you think . . . do you think that when we walked past again and didn’t see them, they were . . .’ My voice trailed off.

Fat tears rolled down Gaia’s face. Her eyes looked large and glassy.

‘What’s wrong, Gaia?’ I said. ‘Are you upset about the men we saw? Don’t worry.’

But whatever I said, she couldn’t stop the tears from rolling down her face. They ran all the way down her cheeks and down her chin, making wet lines on her face until she pulled down her sleeve and wiped them away.

‘It’s OK, Gaia, it’s OK.’

The whistle went and Gaia sniffed and wiped her face with her sleeve again.

‘We shouldn’t have gone out last night,’ she said. ‘It could have been us.’ She slowly stood up and we walked into line.

We filed into school and sat down at our desks but there was no work on our tables to do. Usually we start the day answering maths questions but the board was blank and our books weren’t out. Miss Farraway sat down on her chair and looked at us blankly, as if she couldn’t remember why she was here, or why we were there either, for that matter.

‘Miss Farraway,’ said Paul. ‘We haven’t got our maths books.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Miss Farraway. ‘Maths books.’

‘And there aren’t any questions on the board,’ Paul continued.

‘Well,’ said Miss Farraway, and it seemed like she was going to say something else after that, but she didn’t. And she didn’t make a move to get our books either.

‘Miss Farraway, are you all right?’ asked Olu, who’s the kind of person who always looks after people who fall over in the playground and takes them upstairs for a plaster or an ice pack.

‘Yes,’ said Miss Farraway, but her eyes filled with tears.

‘Miss Farraway!’ said Olu and jumped out of her chair to comfort her.

‘Thank you, Olu. I’m OK. Thank you. Sit down, lovely.’

But then she really started sobbing. No one knew what to do or what to say. This never happened. Teachers don’t cry. Or if they do, they never do in front of us kids.

Olu stood paralysed halfway between Miss Farraway and her chair. Some of the girls started to cry a little bit themselves, although I wondered if they knew why.

I looked over to Gaia, who was looking down at her table, concentrating on a tiny spot on her desk.

Miss Farraway left the room in the end. She just walked straight out. Miss Arnold, the deputy head, came in a few minutes later and found us some maths questions to do but we were all too stunned to do any of them.

‘Is Miss Farraway OK, Miss Arnold?’ Olu asked.

‘She’s very upset, as you have all seen. It’s been a very upsetting time for lots of people at the moment. How are you all feeling with what’s been going on?’

‘I’m scared,’ said someone straight away. I turned round and I saw the voice had come from Michael.

‘Me too,’ a few people agreed.

‘I worry every night that our block will collapse,’ said Paul. ‘I can’t sleep because of it.’

‘I’m frightened about being outside,’ said Olu.

‘I’m scared something will happen to my little sister and my mum when they’re at home during the day,’ said Martha. ‘What if I come home from school and our building’s collapsed? What would I do?’

We went round and round, talking about our fears and worries. Miss Arnold never said that we shouldn’t worry or that we’d be OK or anything like that. She just smiled sadly as someone else started speaking.

Gaia and I didn’t say anything.

I listened to the sound of everyone’s voices. They sounded high and coiled, as though they’d been wound up tighter and tighter until they were taut and could break any moment. I didn’t want to hear their words any longer. I could feel my chest folding in on itself, smaller and smaller, as though it was trying to fit into a small square box, and my breaths came quickly and shallow. I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

I heard someone say my name, and when I looked up Miss Arnold was standing over me and she’d put her hand on my shoulder.

‘Are you all right, Ade?’ she said.

I nodded, but she didn’t stop looking away from me with the same worried eyes and I wished I could have told her the truth, right then. I wished I could have cried like some of the others and have Miss Arnold pat my back comfortingly. I wished I could have told her that I was scared.

Just like everyone else.

We had PE outside and threw brightly coloured balls to each other, standing in long lines across the playground. Gaia said that she had a stomach ache so she sat on the wall watching us. She kept pulling her sleeves down so they came over her wrists and her hands and then wrapping her arms around her like she was cold, even though it was another hot, sunny, airless day.

By lunch time she seemed to be feeling a little better. She ate a couple of mouthfuls from her plate, chewing steadily and staring into the distance, and then she turned to me suddenly and said, ‘So, what do you think they’re going to do now those men have died?’

‘I don’t know. They don’t know how they died. I watched the news all night. They just said the same thing again and again. That their deaths were being treated as suspicious.’

‘I don’t think someone killed them,’ Gaia said.

I looked at her questioningly.

‘If no one killed them, how did they die?’

‘I think,’ Gaia continued, and she lowered her voice to a whisper, ‘I think it had something to do with the buildings.’

‘The buildings?’

‘We had a bad feeling about them for a reason. I think there’s something wrong with them,’ she said.

‘But how could a fallen-down building kill two men just by them standing next to it?’

‘I don’t know what’s wrong with them, Adeola. I’m just saying I think they’re something to do with it.’

Gaia looked cross for a moment. Then her face changed. She looked very worried.

‘And I definitely don’t think we should get close to them again,’ she said. ‘You won’t, will you – go close to one again? I can always bring you some food from my house so you don’t have to go to the shops.’

I knew what Gaia meant about having a bad feeling about the fallen buildings, but then we’d walked past them last night and we were fine now, so I wasn’t sure she was right.

‘Ade? Do you promise me? Don’t go anywhere near them.’

‘OK,’ I said.

It seemed better to agree with her than to make her panic. I didn’t let on that I’d forgotten to get any milk last night and what we had left in the fridge had gone lumpy and sour-smelling. I just wouldn’t tell her that I was going back to the shops tonight.

That way, I wouldn’t worry her.

That evening there were lots and lots of policemen on the street. Some of them were standing in a line in front of the fallen buildings and others were walking around, with large, pointy-nosed Alsatians that were sniffing the pavements and the walls.

I decided to go to the closest newsagent, which was only a little shop but which had a fridge with pints of cold milk in it. It wasn’t very far away. I had to go the same route as I had taken with Gaia the day before but I didn’t stop to look at the buildings at all today. I hurried past the line of policemen that surrounded the area where the two men had been found. Finally I made it into the shop and bought a large bottle of milk so it would last us a bit longer.

‘Be careful out there, sonny,’ the shopkeeper said as he passed me my change. He looked out of the window as though he expected something to happen any moment. The bottle felt cold in my hands but I didn’t wait for a bag. I wanted to get home as quickly as I could. Now that I was out on the streets, I was starting to feel more and more like Gaia was right, that I shouldn’t have come out. I don’t know if it was because of what Gaia had told me or if there really was something in the air, something menacing out there that said,
No one is safe
.

I decided I would run back to my tower. I could almost picture in my head exactly what was going to happen in the next few minutes. I would run down the road, turn off down the first street and sprint past the policemen and then run in a straight line to my tower, open the door and bang it behind me.

The door would go,
Slam!
No problems. I’d be safe.

I started running as soon as I left the shop. The bottle of milk felt heavy in my hands, so I had to hold it like a baby and it made me slow down a bit.

I turned down the street towards the policemen with one eye on my tower block in the distance. I wished I had never left it.

I ran past the policemen. The bored one, the one who yawned, the one who looked like he wanted to go home and have his dinner.

Then, suddenly, there was a shout.

I stopped and turned back in surprise.

Then I wished I had just carried on running.

One of the policemen I had just passed had fallen over. The policemen on either side of him were trying to help him up, but then, as they kneeled down to help him, they fell to the ground too. It was as if they had all suddenly fallen asleep.

Their helmets made a cracking sound as they hit the ground.
Crack, crack, crack
. One after the other.

I remember thinking it looked like a line of dominoes falling over, each one pushing the next one over in a line that was coming towards me.

I didn’t know what to do. It’s all so strange when you only have a split second to decide. It seems impossible that you are able to think of so many things at once in your head. Part of me thought I should be helping them. Another part thought I would be falling asleep and falling to the ground next, and then another part, the loudest of all, was thinking of Gaia.

Gaia’s face, shouting, ‘Run!’

That is what I did.

I dropped the milk and it exploded on the ground and I ran away as fast as I could.

I ran into my tower and I ran up the stairs and I didn’t stop running even when I reached my corridor. I ran into my flat and slammed the front door behind me, and I only stopped when I was in my bedroom and the door was closed behind me.

I didn’t have anywhere left to go.

It took a long time for my breathing to slow down. I don’t really know if it was from the running or what I had just seen.

What had happened to those policemen? Why had they passed out like that? And the question I couldn’t stop asking myself: had they just fallen asleep or was it something a lot more serious than that?

Had they died?

It was on the news that night.

A group of policemen had been found dead. Close to where the two council workers had been found. Their deaths were also being treated as suspicious.

Suddenly there were lots of people who arrived in big white vans with satellites on top. People got quite excited in school when we found out that these were TV people.

We watched them through the bars of the playground gate. They had large black cameras perched on their shoulders like parrots. The newsreaders looked serious and worried one minute, when the camera was in front of them, and then laughed and smoked cigarettes the next. Some of them even came over and started filming the outside of our school.

I ran away to the other side of the playground when they did that and went to find Gaia. She was not hanging around the cameras either. She was sitting under the sunflowers picking up tiny little stones from the ground.

I sat beside her.

‘Gaia, last night—’ I started, but then I stopped myself. I didn’t really want to tell her that I hadn’t listened to her, but I had to tell someone about what I had seen.

‘Last night, I saw what happened.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I saw what happened to those policemen.’