The Kimota Anthology Read Online Free PDF Page B

believe.
    “Hey,” she said. “Look at this.”
    She was silhouetted against the daylight. All that he could see was that she’d pulled her knickers down to around her knees and she was holding the lower part of her dress up high with both hands.
    He didn’t know what to do. There was braying laughter from outside and he could hear one of them saying, “She’s doing it! She’s really doing it! Have a look down and see his face!” The outlines of their heads bobbed in and out of the entranceway, and Dylan felt trapped and scared.
    “Stop it!” he said.
    Kelly hauled up her knickers and turned, as if to run with the others and leave him there. She didn’t see where she was going. As she spun around she went straight into one of the dropped beams, whacking her head into it at eyebrow level. She stopped. She’d made no sound, other than the cricket-ball crack of bone against concrete. Then she dropped with a certain grace, and landed with none.
    There was a silence. Then the others started to call to her.
    “Kelly?” Sam called.
    And Jason shouted, “What’s going on?”
    “She’s banged her head,” Dylan shouted back. “You’ve got to come and help.” But nobody came down. He could hear them talking outside. There was urgency and concern in their tone, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying.
    “Come on,” he called out to them, but still nobody came.
    He had to do something. Kelly was lying in the rubbish. He got hold of her under the arms, and started to drag her out. Would she need an ambulance? He was wondering how one could ever get in here, given that every track into the park had been blocked. To get one at all, somebody would have to call for it. That meant a lurch into the world of responsibility. The very thought made him feel sick.
    Kelly’s dress caught on something and when he struggled to pull it free, it tore. He hadn’t looked at her too closely. She might have been dead, for all he knew. But as he was dragging her, she suddenly revived and started to cry, as if he’d jogged some wires that had sparked her back into life. Once started, she wouldn’t stop.
    Outside, she sat on the ground bawling while the rest of them stood around her and watched. Her forehead was cut and the rest of her looked pretty wretched.
    Michael said, “What did you do?”
    “Nothing,” Dylan said.
    “Our mam’ll go mad.”
    Still crying, Kelly was arranging her torn dress over her scratched and dirty legs in a belated act of modesty. She was putting out the same loud, sobbing note, over and over. Her face was all twisted up and streaked with clean teary tracks through the grime. She sat on the pressed-down grass, looking utterly helpless.
    Dylan wondered aloud whether they ought to call someone to come out for her, hoping that someone else would volunteer, but this was quickly deemed unthinkable.
    Jason turned to look down at Michael and said, “You’re going to have to take her home.”
    Michael, stricken, looked up at each of them. “I’ll get killed when mam sees her,” he said.
    “You’ll get killed if you just leave her here screaming her head off,” Sam pointed out.
    They all tried to help her to stand, and she beat their hands away the first time but then couldn’t manage to get up on her own. They raised her to her feet. She was bawling too much even to say what hurt.
    The four of them went off one way, in the direction of the Estate, and Dylan went another in order to pick up the path that would lead him toward home. He watched them as they crossed the lower fields, and could hear Kelly all the way. She never let up.
    Dylan re-entered the garden using the same route by which he’d left it. His book was gone from the shed, so his absence had definitely been discovered.
    He got back into the house and up the stairs to his bedroom without being seen. Some of his clothes were dirty and so he quietly changed them, opening and closing his drawers and the wardrobe door with elaborate