“I know.” James seemed tired now. He was just a wee boy, acting like a man, pretending to be a different type of man.
Mungo pulled his finger off the rusted nail. “I’m glad you are fixed, James. You’ve worked hard to get better. You deserve it.”
“I’m not fixed, Mungo. Ah’m just a liar.”
“Yeah, well.” Mungo tapped the shards of glass from the sole of his trainer. “I’m too many other bad things. I don’t want to be a liar as well.”
For a moment James looked like he was going to correct him – he was already a liar – but he bit his tongue. He crossed the rat glass towards him. In the half-light, he put his index finger on the nape of Mungo’s neck. It was the slightest of touches, a hand that could easily turn to a bully’s flick if someone came across the scabby grassland. In a downward motion he gently stroked the line of fine hair that grew there. Mungo tilted his head forward and closed his eyes. He wanted it to last.
“This is what you do when a bird gets distressed.”
“Is it not kinder to jist snap their necks?”
James laughed. “It’ll be over soon. Then we can pick any direction and ride our bikes there.”
“And what about Ashley?”
“You ask too many questions.”
“If you do shag her, I would understand.” It was a gamble to say it, he could lose, but he needed to say it regardless. “But, like, I will also die.”
“Nah. You’re harder than ye look.” James stopped stroking his neck and drew his knuckle gently across the twitching cheekbone. When Mungo opened his eyes ten digits were splayed before him, he added his own hands and extended four more, then James folded one away. “Look, only thirteen left now. Ma da has only thirteen more shore leaves til you turn sixteen.” He seemed like he wanted a smile from Mungo before he left. Just one single smile. Mungo would not surrender one.
Mungo found himself staring at the countdown. It had seemed innocent as an advent calendar a few days ago. But now he pictured Jodie with her bags already packed, Ashley sprawled on her parent’s bed, and Hamish, wild on his own supply, with a bottle of siphoned petrol in his hand. Thirteen fingers, thirteen shore leaves, was a distance too far to imagine. They wouldn’t both make it. Not safely. Not together. “I can leave now, if you can? Tonight. Who cares if somebody phones the polis? Who cares if the school sends out the Social Work? We can hide. Let’s just fuckin’ go.”
James chewed the inside of his cheek. It was worse than he had thought. He reached beyond Mungo and closed the doocot door. In the darkness his strong fingers encircled Mungo, they pressed against his ribs and moved around to his spine as the long arms snaked around him. Mungo suffocated himself against James’s chest, he found the prickle of Shetland wool solid and comforting. James’s breath felt hot against his crown. “I listened to your mixtape. I stand in the dark at my window and listen to it every night. I thought you said it was all top forty but it’s only one song over and over.”
“I felt embarrassed. I lied.”
“I love the Smiths.”
Mungo rubbed his face on the lambswool. “But how come Morrissey didnae think there was panic on the streets of Glasgow? There’s plenty of fuckin’ panic here.”
“Probably because Glasgow rhymes with fuck all. Well, anytime I hear it I will think of you. Ya handsome wee devil.” He tilted his head towards Mungo’s lips and kissed him deep on the mouth. Then he shoved him back to arm’s length and shook him slightly. “Cheer up. I love you, Mungo Hamilton.”
“Don’t.” Something in him could not stand to be loved.
“How no? I can love you if I want.”
“It’ll just make it harder for me. When everything gets spoiled.”
James took his hands away. Mungo felt like the doo again as the anxiety flooded his body. Without opening his eyes, he could hear the rusty hinges of the heavy door, could feel the cold, weak light on the pink of his eyelids.
“Not everything good goes bad.”
Mungo wanted to believe that.
James took up the pliers again. “Only two more days. We can be the gether again. Can you come over on Saturday night? He should be on the last train back to Aberdeen by then.”
“Aye, okay.” Mungo tried his best to sound nonchalant, when in reality he would look forward to that moment for every minute in between. Then he shook his head, and his hair fell over his eyes again. “Wait, naw. I can’t come on Saturday night.”
“How no?” James looked crestfallen.
Mungo would never admit it, but he liked to see James’s disappointment, the slight swing back of power. It was a twisted payment for the starvation he had suffered the past week. “Nothing. It’s jist our Hamish’s nonsense.”
“Can’t you just tell him no?”
Mungo laughed at the absurdity of the idea. “That’s funny. Let me tell him I don’t like his glasses while I’m at it.”
“What can be that important it cannae wait?”
“I hate it. But there’s a fight planned for Saturday night across the Royston bridge. The Bhoyston have been bamming them up. He said I needed to be there to give them hauners. It’s a reputation thing. I’m a Hamilton.” He skipped over the threat about burning James alive. “Hamish wouldnae take no for an answer.”
“So, you’re just gonnae go and chib some Catholics?”
“Honestly, I’m brickin’ it. But I was hoping to jist show face, then stand at the back, like.” Mungo found a bottle of penicillin on the shelf. He shook it like it was a maraca.
“But I’m a Catholic.”
“You’re no really. It’s no the same, you’re different. You don’t even go to chapel.”
“It’s exactly the fuckin’ same.” He turned his shoulder on Mungo and said just loud enough for him to hear. “Ye’re a wee coward.”
Idiot. Weakling. Poofter. Liar. Coward.
“You do well worse things to hide yourself.”