You Don't Know Me

6

Okay, so do I just carry on from yesterday then?

As I was saying yesterday. I knew the dead boy, Jamil. But on the street people never called him Jamil, they called him JC. Maybe because he was thin or maybe it was his Jesus beard. But JC is what I knew him as. He was one of them plastic gangsters. He was skinny as a twelve-year-old girl but he was always acting like he was a big man. I knew him from around the area and that but I also knew him for another thing. He knew Kira, my girl. You could say that everything that happened to me – this case, the murder – it all goes back to Ki.

What can explain to you lot about Kira? Kira is like the most beautiful thing you ever saw. She is the sort of person who if she walks down the road ten boys will be staring at her like Rihanna just walked past them. She has these grey eyes that lock on to you when she looks at you. And if she is looking at you, doesn’t matter that she has these long legs and a walk that makes you think she is swaying in the wind, you be looking her right in those eyes. Locked in. Wide grey eyes that reach all the way to the edges of her face. Grey eyes are quite unusual anyway but on a black girl, doesn’t matter that she’s mixed race, they stand out like cat’s eyes. On her though, they don’t jump out like that, they just kind of fit. They match her wide mouth and her high cheeks. They match her skin. The eyes belong to the face and the face could have no other eyes but those.

I saw her for the first time eight years ago during the time that Bless and Mum were in hospital recovering after Dad. I had just been in for visiting time and I was feeling proper low. The specialist had just been and said that Bless would always have that thing where the side of her face drops. Don’t look at her man, please!

They said maybe it would get better all on its own but probability was that it would always be more or less like that. But he said at the end with a half-smile like he was offering up hope, ‘There’s nothing to stop her from talking. Nothing physical that is. Just see if you can get her to come out of herself.’

He says it like that. Like it’s the easiest thing in the world. Like there is some door that she can open in herself that can let her leave and speak again.

I had just got on the bus from the hospital and was still probably thinking about some nasty shit that needed to be done to Dad. Bless was still locked up in her own world. She still hadn’t said a word. She had been there in the hospital for a few weeks by then but still not a sound out of her. She just shut out the world and shut herself down. I didn’t know what was going to happen to her and so I was just as you would expect. Face down; lost in my own head.

The back of the bus, upper deck is my spot, or as near as I can get to the back. But because of all this, all that old shit didn’t seem to matter to me any more and I just chucked myself down stairs at the back and stared out the window. It was maybe fifteen twenty minutes later that I looked up and saw her sitting opposite me. She had her earphones in and was nodding quietly to the music that was buzzing out of them. She was just wearing this white vest and jeans but I couldn’t stop staring at her. Her eyes were closed and made it seem like she was dreaming. She was just there, eyes closed, a slight smile on her face and just, nodding to a beat in her ears.

I stared at her for maybe ten minutes. It felt kind of weird like I was looking through a keyhole at her. But I carried on looking. I couldn’t help it. I remember thinking that I would be okay as long as her eyes stayed shut. But just as I was finishing that thought her eyes snapped open and locked me down. Shit. Busted! Them eyes. Dazzling grey. Almost silver. When they on you. You can’t do nothing.

I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t say anything because them earphones was doing all the chatting. So in the end I just laughed. She raised her eyebrow and hooked a finger through the leads and released the buds.

‘What you laughing at?’ she goes. She definitely wasn’t impressed.

‘Nuffing man,’ I say, still laughing. ‘You proper caught me though innit?’

‘Ain’t you got nothing better to do than eyeing up girls?’ she goes and sticks her earbuds back in and snaps her eyes shut until it’s time for me to get off.

Ten minutes more she keeps them closed. There is no expression on her face at all. It’s just a blank. I almost nudge her to say goodbye to her when I finally had to get off, but I didn’t have the balls at that time.

On the walk home I couldn’t stop thinking about her though. She was hot but that wasn’t it. I just felt like I recognized her, or something like that. And that was how it was for the next few days. My mind was somewhere else. Even when I was in hospital I was thinking about her most of the time. Every time I got on the bus home, I sat on the lower deck, hoping maybe I would see her. I did that for ages without a single sighting even. I can’t tell you how depressing it was. One day though, my luck changed.

I was already sitting at the back of the bus when she gets on like the wind carried her. It was sunny and she was wearing the summer like it was clothes. Her skin was glowing, she had on this little checked shirt. She was fit no doubt. And, no lie, she kind of smelled like chocolate. This time I was ready for her though. I stuck out my hand and said hi. She looked at it like I’d just offered her a fish. ‘I don’t shake hands with strangers,’ she says, and put her buds in and shut her eyes.

I got off before she opened them again. I was proper gutted. She had been on my mind for days, then when I saw her I blew it. Shit. So I’m not like a kind of guy who just gives up so I spent a lot of time thinking about a plan so that if I saw her again I wouldn’t mess it up this time.

What I did was I kept this bit of paper on me in case I saw her. Truth be told I had this paper on me for ages on the off-chance. Then one day finally I saw her again when she got on my bus. This time I knew what to do. Only thing was that she was sitting two seats away from me and some great big fat thing was sitting next to her and I couldn’t get near her. I waited and waited though and when the other one gets off I make my move and rush in next to her on her two-seater. She didn’t even seem to see me but I turn towards her and give her the paper. She takes it, opens it and looks at me at last. Trapped in again. Them eyes.

‘What do I want to know your name for?’ she says.

‘So you can shake my hand innit coz you don’t shake hands with strangers. And you got my digits there in case you want to call me,’ I say and laugh. ‘See I got you. Little smile but still a smile,’ I add.

‘Whatever,’ she says and rolls her eyes. But she kept the paper though and even an idiot knows that that was a good sign.

It was a full two months though before she agreed to let me take her out. And even then she made it sound like she was doing it out of pity. ‘You look like you need a good meal in you,’ she had said. ‘Be round at mine at seven sharp. If you’re late, you will be.’ Ha. Still remember them exact words.

She happened to live not that far from me and so I walked it. Although it was already well into October, it was still warm enough for people to be in the streets drinking and hanging out. I had just bought these new trainers so I was giving them a spin and truth be told I was looking alright. I walked past a group of kids by the stairs at the main door to the block where she lived. This kid Jamil was there even though at that time I didn’t know that’s what his name was. To me he was just some kid hanging with his boys. I did know one of them though and I checked him. He nodded back at me and turned back to his boys so I slipped past them all and bounced up the concrete steps to her door.

She opened it looking like a Hollywood movie star, long dress, bare shoulders and still smelling of chocolate. ‘Come in,’ she goes and turns into the hallway. I follow her in.

I didn’t really know what to expect. Sometimes you go round a mate’s flat and it could be the exact same everything as your own flat, same windows, same doors, same rooms, same layout but at the same time it could feel like you had just stepped into another world. Someone would have like everything modern in their yards, all the gadgets, flat-screen whatever. Someone else would have like the same shit that they had in the eighties, you get me, with all like nest of tables and big soppy posters on the walls in black plastic frames. So I had no idea what I was about to step into, but I thought I would be prepared for whatever and take it in like it was just normal.

Kira lived by herself since she was like fifteen. She had no mum, the dad was wherever and the one brother she had, Spooks, was always in and out of jail, so it was just one of them things. Her place though was a complete surprise to me. It was the same shit, as I say, square rooms, low ceilings, iron-framed windows, old radiators. Just your standard council thing. But the thing that made her place different was the books. Every surface had a pile of books on it stacked as neatly as they could be and as high as they could get without toppling down. I don’t mean just the tables and chairs and what have you, but the floor too. Except for a space that made a path from the doors, it was basically books all the way round. They went round the sofa, the table legs, round the TV, everywhere you could see. It was like she’d robbed a library.

‘This place is alright, you know,’ I say because I really couldn’t think of anything else to say. My heart was going a bit if I’m honest with you. She didn’t say anything but shrugged her shoulders a little as if to say ‘whatever’ and sat down on the leather sofa. There was a space for her legs but nothing more than that.

‘You got enough books innit?’ I say. She reaches over to what was probably once a small table but what was now just a high pile of books and hands me a beer.

‘You got one chance to impress me,’ she says flashing them grey eyes at me.

I took that as my cue to start babbling and I do just that for the next four hours. To this day I am not sure what I said to her, but something I said seemed to do the trick because after that night as far as anyone was concerned she was my girl.