The look on Ashy’s face, a sudden disappointment mixed with amusement, makes me start.
“You think it’s worth somin’?” I ask, trying to fight down the desperation in my voice.
She pretends she’s considering it, making a big show of looking it up and down. Finally: “You can’t honestly think that’s worth nothin’. Nyx, it’s the oldest thing I ever saw. Ha! Thinkin’ you was clever findin’ it.”
I shrug, trying not to show her how much that meant to me. “We can still scrap it, huh? Sell off the metal?”
“Scrappers won’t want this junk.” Ashy said decidedly. “Way too bashed up. Looks like someone drunk drove in it. And ya know what I think of drink.” Oh, I knew full well what she thought of drink, it was a trap that only stupid people fell into, and she was not stupid.
Ashy knows best, I think to myself and turn back to the bin I’d been ripping through. But the thought of the car- lying still and silent in the woods behind the Big Houses- it plagues me. Worth nothing- the more I think about it the less it makes sense. Scrappers take anything- especially big stuff. Like cars.
“Jesus, Nyx, its dark. Better get you home.” I stare at her. Hum approval. Start to walk off.
Looking back at her, I say, “But it ain’t no cause to blaspheme.” She sighs and rolls her eyes at me. This is a sort of ritual between us, the going home procedure. One of the things that make us feel like an old couple in retirement, getting into habits that don’t change and never will.
I shin up a tree nearby and hop onto the roof of one of the Big Houses. Slide down a drainpipe. Call softly, “Bye, Ashy,” and I’m out of there, running down the dark alleyway opposite the houses. The owners of the Big Houses don’t like people rummaging through their bins, of course not. And the woods at the back of their houses- they view that supposedly public land as their own.
As I let myself in at the front door of the council flats, I can hear that the drunken men who live two floors below us have come back. They have a predictable routine: get drunk, come home, make noise, sleep, have a hangover. I look upwards, to where they must be, my indigo eyes piercing the ceiling. I’m not worried about what they could do to me in this state; they were always too drunk to notice me before.
I creep into our flat, trying not to wake Leila, and then realising something’s already roused her and she’s crying her precious little head off, I bang into the kitchen/dining room/living space as loud as I like, yelling “Hey, Mam!” as I put some pasta on the stove. Leila’s screams reach maximum level, but I am well practised at blanking them by now. My mam tries her best but Leila’s truly a screamer, and we don’t have enough dosh for anything to quell her noises, you know, like a dummy. The word’s foreign; no, scrap that; Martian, to me. Dosh. The most I’ve ever held in my wafer-thin hand is a five pound note, and that was only because I needed to do the shopping for Mam that once. She’d never trust me with so much of the precious benefits usually.
Then she appears, and her face is worn and tired, and I go and throw my arms around her body. She’s feeling thinner than before.
“Mam!” I say like a proper Welsh girl, proud of my meagre existence in the slums of Cardiff.
She chuckles down at me, but it don’t quite reach her eyes. “You bin off with that Ashy agin?” She asks, severe and proper now. “I don’t like her, she’s sixteen, that bein’ three years older than you now. You should ‘ave mates your own age. And you trust her too much, what with only being around her two weeks or so.”
I stare at her. She’s never come over like that about Ashy before, but thinking about it, I kind of guess it’s true. “Yeah,” I say slowly, “but Ashy’s great. Look what I got!” I detract the conversation away and brandish todays spoils, a potty that one of the Big Houses decided they didn’t want any more.
