slumber talk

11: The Car Jacking

"Hassan."

I stomped after him in my leather winter boots, toes pinching at the flat tips where they'd turned numb with frozen sweat.

"Hassan, for crying out – will you stop for a second?! I'm trying to talk to you!"

Hassan whirled around immediately where he stood, which wasn't the action I was expecting. I had to dig my heels into the dirt beneath to stop myself from colliding into him.

"What is it?" He stared back at me with drawn eyes and a tight mouth, lips downturned into a resentful grimace. So much anger in such a tired, lazy oaf.

"What is it, Ada? Seriously. I don't have the time for any more of your stupid questions."

"I wanted to tell you I was sorry."

"You're sorry?"

"Yes. I'm sorry. I didn't realise the woods would be that far away. Or that they'd be bordered off. Or that ... I really thought there would be a footpath or – or a bridge, or something."

Hassan's eyes didn't convey anything other than the short fuse he'd spoken about earlier. "I am this close to kicking you into a ditch and leaving you there for an army of crows."

"Murder?"

He blinked. "What? No, it's – no I wouldn't –"

"No, as in, I think it's called a murder. Not an army."

Hassan stared at me, dumbfounded, as I looked blankly back at him. After a second or so of eerie silence, he turned on his heel and continued marching across the field.

I hurried along after him.

"Or maybe it's a horde?"

"You know what, I changed my mind. I would."

"Would what?"

"Doesn't fucking matter – just keep the fuck up. I'm not waiting for you."

Easy for him to say, in his battered, hydro-grip sporty shoes. My boots barely had any hold on dry ground; I had to hop like a Von Trapp child from patch to patch across the field to make sure I didn't squelch too much in one area and end up flat on my behind. I couldn't see Hassan ingratiating himself to come to my aid. In some ways, chasing after this man's million hues of mood swings and TNT-inspired escape passages had finally given me a reason to be grateful for my gargantuan height and sturdy, ogre-like build, although I resented the idea that my sole purpose of existence might have had something to do with playing sidekick to Hassan Ruparelia.

As a socially conscious young child or teenager, it's kind of difficult to shrink into your growing bones when they're so much bigger than everyone else's. At the age of 13 I was already a head and a half taller most of my peers, with a handful of the boys in my year slowly growing to reach me during GCSEs and beyond – and when you added onto that the array of freckles, the swollen lips, the large flat nose and the flaming red hair, you really very quickly ran out of reasons to believe you could be like anybody else, even on the inside. I sat at the back of every classroom so that other students could see the chalkboard, on and isle far away from group gossip and chatter, and was forcibly cajoled onto every school volleyball team because I was the only one with a 90% success rate of smashing the ball over the net. Friendships were forged in spite rather than because, and most of my previous relationships had been a matter of convenience and fraying, fleeting boredom.

None of it was anything to be sad about; I capitalised on it much more than my xenophobic peers. But I could only imagine that it had contributed somewhat to the awkwardness I carried with me like a label from a previous life. Here, running after my dishonourable cohort with my arms outstretched like a crane in flight, I couldn't help but grudgingly respect that my long legs and chunky framework were the only reasons I was able to keep up with the impatience and agility that made Hassan the perfect imagination of a human hurricane. He was only an inch or so taller than I was, and yet for every step I took closer to him, he managed to charge two in advance. A greater acceleration couldn't have been formed unless we'd been opposing magnetic dipoles.