Free Solace of the Road by Siobhan Dowd Page A

We came out of a Big Bang.’
    I grinned. ‘Too right we did.’
    ‘There’s no such thing as aliens,’ he said. ‘Because, you see, we’re all alien.’ He sounded like he was lecturing a room of students with his posh, almost grown-up voice.
    ‘If we’re all alien, then there is such a thing as aliens,’ I said.
    His chin cocked like his thoughts were too big for his brain. ‘Either everything’s alien or nothing’s alien,’ he said. ‘And if everything’s alien then there’s nothing for it to be alien against.’
    ‘Cor.’ In ten years he’d be bat-winging across Oxford, winning genius prizes by the truck-load. ‘Say, I get you,’ I said. ‘That’s wows-ville.’ Wows-ville is Trim’s word for when something’s A-1.
    The boy looked up and gave me a big smile. ‘Do you really think so?’ he said.
    Then Junior Einstein went all shy on me again, like he’d just remembered he wasn’t meant to talk to strangers, and he peered through the glass like his life depended on it. So I left him to it and went out of the cubicle, half grinning, half thinking that was one sweet boy, only he needed serious rescuing from mogitdom.
    The daylight hurt my eyes. I walked past an elephant skeleton to another doorway. There was this whole other part behind, dark and crammed in withthings. I went round half floating, like I do at school. You look but don’t look. You switch off your thoughts and stare and think of nothing, just airwaves and bubbles. It gets right up the pit-miseries’ noses. But however hard I tried, I couldn’t help seeing into the cases – the spiky writing on the labels and things that looked like they belonged in the dump. One cabinet had old rope in it, no kidding. A museum where they display rope is sad.
    There were totem poles, masks and mummy cases. And under the displays, the cabinets had drawers, and some you could open. I found a case with magic stuff in it, only it all looked battered and mouldering. I opened a drawer and inside was a brown beeswax model of a naked man with pins sticking out of his eyes. Yikes. Voodoo. How sick is that. I thought I’d throw up. I wouldn’t do that to my worst enemy. Not even the Kavanagh kid that tore up Mam’s picture. Nobody. I slammed the drawer shut, fast.
    Then I came face to face with the mask. It had big empty eyes and thin cheeks. Around the edge it had curly black pretend hair, all frizzled up like some crazed doll. It was the spitting image of Denny-boy. I staggered back the way I’d come, through all the cabinets. I was dizzy, with dots fizzing round me like the air was made of lemonade. White streaks flashed across my eyelids.
    Throbbing.
    People.
    Echoes.
    Skulls.
    I found a sign for the ladies and locked myself in. I sat down and took the wig off. I doubled over with a bad belly. I pressed my knuckles up to my eyes but all I could see was the mask face with the crazy doll-hair. It had come alive and turned into Denny-boy, the nightmare man, coming and going in the sky house, spelling trouble in both directions.
    And I remembered him like it was yesterday. How his head forever knocked the paper-globe lampshade overhead. How he’d have his cut-off denim shorts on and a thick tartan shirt, like it was summer from the waist down and winter above. His hair was like a thousand corkscrews, coal-black, and his eyes bright ink-blue. He’d stand, not sit, and horse his way through a cereal bowl with the Krispies and Shreddies mixed up, shovelling them down like there was a gun to his head. Then he’d line up two thin white papers on the table and put the inside of a cigarette along it like a snake. Maybe he’d catch me looking at him and wink. ‘Hey there, Holl,’ he’d go. ‘What are you today? Doll or troll?’ I’d stare. But coming up behind me, from her bedroom, I could hear Mam’s voice, laughing. ‘Definitely troll today, Denny. No doll anywhere. Scram, Holl. Chop-chop. Tell Colette’s mam downstairs to take you to school.