The Bone Clocks

A bat flaps by, like it’s on a string in a naff vampire film.

“Not really, if I’m honest. The furthest I’ve ever been’s Ireland, to see my mum’s relatives in Cork.”

“What’s it like?”

“Different. It’s not all checkpoints and bombs like up north, though the Troubles are still in the air a bit, and it’s best to shut up about politics. They hateThatcher ’cause of Bobby Sands and the hunger strikers. I’ve got this one great-aunt, my mam’s aunt Eilнsh—she’s brilliant. She keeps hens and has a gun in her coal hole, and when she was younger she cycled all the way to Kathmandu. Really, she did. She felt that wa

There’s a moon sharp enough to cut your finger on.

We say nothing for a bit, but it’s not an awkward nothing. Then Brubeck says, “D’you know ’bout the second umbilical cord, Sykes?”

I can’t make out his face anymore. “You what?”

“When you’re a baby in the womb, there’s this cord—”

“I know what an umbilical cord is, thanks. But a second one?”

“Well, psychologists say there’s a second umbilical cord, an invisible one, an emotional one, which ties you to your parents for the whole time you’re a kid. Then, one day, you have a row with your mum if you’re a girl, or your dad if you’re a boy, and that argument cuts your second cord. Then, and only then, are you ready to go off into the big wide world and be an adult on your own terms. It’s like a rite-of-passage thing.”

“I argue with my mam, like, daily. She treats me like I’m ten.”

Brubeck lights another fag, takes a drag, and passes it to me. “I’m talking a bigger, nastier fight. Afterwards you know it happened. You’re not the kid you were.”

“And you’re sharing these pearls of wisdom with me why?”

He lines up his answer carefully. “If you’re ru

“She slappedme.”

“Bet she feels like shit about it now.”

“You don’t even know her!”

“Are you sure you do, Sykes?”

“What’s thats’posed to bloody mean?”

Brubeck lets it drop. So I let it drop too.

·   ·   ·

THE CHURCH IS quiet as the grave. Brubeck’s asleep in a nest of dusty cushions. We’re up on this gallery thing along the back wall, so we won’t be spotted if any Satan worshipers drop by for a black mass. My calves are sore, my blister’s throbbing, and my mind keeps rewinding to the scene with Vi

22:58, glows my Timex. The maddest minutes of the week at the Captain Marlow are right now: last orders on a Saturday night. Mam, Dad, and Glenda, who just works weekends, will be going full pelt; a roaring wall of drinkers flapping fivers and te

No fecking way.

July 1

TIN WHISTLES, SCRATTY NOISES, birdsong, and a stained-glass angel. The little church on the Isle of Grain, I remember now, lit by sun through the first crack of the day. Mam. The row. Stella and Vi

Who cares? I lost Vi

Ed Brubeck snores like a bear. Brubeck wouldn’t two-time his girlfriend. If he has one. Most boys in my year drop hints ’bout losing their virginity at a mate’s party, specially boys who haven’t, stroking their bum-fluff moustaches … Ed Brubeck doesn’t do any of that, which means probably he has done it. If it was with someone at our school, I’d’ve heard. Du

Mind you, he told me quite a bit yesterday.

His dad, his family, everything. Why me?

Watch his sleeping, pointy, half-man-half-boy’s face.

And the answer’s obvious: ’Cause he fancies you, you prawn!

If he fancies me, why didn’t he make a pass at me?

He’s clever, I realize. First he makes you grateful.

Right. Of course. I do believe it’s time I was off.

DANDELIONS AND THISTLES grow along the cracked track and the hedges are taller than me. The early sun’s like laser beams. Du

Up ahead, I see the track ending at a farmyard.

I climb a gate and skirt round a field of cabbages.

Another gate. A hawk thing’s a speck in the sky.

Six days should do it. The police only get interested in missing teenagers once a week’s up. Six days’ll show Mam I canlook after myself in the big bad world. I’ll be in a stronger, whatchercallit?, a stronger negotiating position. And I’ll do it on my own, without a Brubeck to get all boyfriendish on me. I’ll have to be careful to make my money last. Remember that time I tried my hand at shoplifting?

One Saturday last year a bunch of us went to Chatham Roller Disco for Ali Jessop’s birthday, but it was so lame that me and Stella and Amanda Kidd sneaked off to the high street. Amanda Kidd said, “Who wants to go fishing, then?” I didn’t want to but Stella said okay, so I acted all cool too and we went into Debenhams. I’d never nicked anything in my life and really I almost peed myself, but I watched Stella. She asked the shop assistant something pointless and a bit later, accidentally on purpose, dropped two lipsticks from the cosmetics stand. When she bent down to pick them up she put one of them in her boot. I did the same with some earrings I liked, and on my way out of the shop, I even asked the assistant what time they were open till. Once we were safe outside, the world felt different, like the rules had been changed. If you keep your nerve, you get what you want. Amanda Kidd had got a pair of sunglasses worth a te