thirsty.”
She didn’t say anything.
“You can’t deprive me of water.”
“I’ll go and ask,” she said, and through the glass she warped and gathered and was gone.
I counted to four hundred and thirty-eight.
When she came back, she had someone else with her. They unlocked the door and swooped in with a plastic cup half-filled with water. I drank it down in one. It wasn’t enough.
The man had a hooked nose and loose, curly hair. I’d seen him before, but not her. He sounded like keys jangling.
He said, “Have you finished fighting?”
I shrugged. “Probably not.”
I didn’t like the way the woman was looking at me. I stared back so she would stop, but she didn’t. Between us there was just the blood in my ears, pounding and pumping, and the look on her face.
She kept her eyes on me while she spoke to the man, and when she left the room. “Hang on a minute, would you? I’ll be right back.”
The man sat in one of the chairs, shifting, trying hard to look relaxed. He leaned towards me and his black eyes blinked, quick and vigilant, like a bird’s. I wondered if he minded being alone with me. I wondered if he was afraid.
“Why won’t you tell us your name?” he said.
I pretended he wasn’t there. I pretended he wasn’t talking.
“I’m Gordon,” he said. “And the lady’s name is Ginny.”
“Well done,” I said. “Good for you.”
“And you are?” he said.
I looked at my shoes, somebody else’s shoes, black and lumpy and scuffed. I wondered how many nobodies had worn them. I felt the fabric of someone else’s shirt against my skin, nobody else’s trousers. How was I supposed to know?
I smiled. “I’m nobody,” I said.
“Oh, come on,” he said. “Everyone is somebody.”
It was amazing really, how he could be so sure of that.
It was the 5th of November when I found out I wasn’t who I thought I was. I remember the exact moment. I didn’t know myself any more. I asked a man for the time so I could commit it to memory. He looked at his watch and told me it was twenty-five past seven. Then he just went back to his newspaper.
I said, “Do you know me? Do you know who I am?” I knew he wouldn’t, but I needed him so badly to say, “Yes.”
I could tell he wasn’t concentrating on his reading any more. He just had his eyes on the words while he waited for me to go away. He was scared.
The Ginny woman came back with something in her hand, a piece of paper. “Can I have a word?” she said.
Gordon got up and they left me in the room on my own again. I could hear them on the other side of the door. They were whispering, but I could still hear.
She said, “I only saw it this morning. Pure coincidence.”
“Bloody hell.”
“He’s been gone nearly two years.”
“Well. I. Never.”
“Do you think it’s him?”
“Look at it. It’s got to be.”
The door handle moved. I shut my eyes and tried to be ready. I tried to stop time. When they came back in they were altered, careful, like I was a bomb that might go off, a sleeping tiger, a priceless vase about to fall.
I thought they’d found me. I wondered how far I would get if I just ran.
Ginny’s hand hovered over mine, without touching. Gordon tried to smile. I was terrified. Was this it?
“Cassiel?” she said.
I looked straight at her. I didn’t know what was going on. “What?”
“Cassiel Roadnight?” she asked.
My name is not Cassiel Roadnight. It never has been. My name is Chap. That’s what Grandad used to call me. I always thought it was a good name. I always thought it suited me.
“Who, me?” I said.
Gordon gave me the piece of paper. It was a printout, a picture of a boy with the word MISSING across his forehead.
A picture of me.
“Oh my God,” I said, and I took in a breath and I held it.
It was old. I was about fourteen maybe, something like that. Brown hair, not long and not short. Blue eyes, same shape, same lights and colours. My face exactly – my nose, my mouth, my chin.
I wondered if it was the last photo anyone had taken of me and I wondered who took it.
I wondered why I was smiling. I didn’t smile when I was fourteen. What did I have to smile about?
“Oh my God,” I said again.
They misunderstood me. Ginny let her hand touch mine and she squeezed. Gordon blew the air from his mouth with puffed cheeks, like a deflating ball. I kept my eyes on the picture.
There was something wrong with it.
Here are some things I know for sure about my face. I see them every time I look in the mirror. I know they are there without even having to look.
One. I have two scars. The first runs from my earlobe to my cheekbone, thin and raised and shiny, like one of the mends on my shirt. A dog bit me when I was five. It hurt like hell.
The second is beneath my left eye, a red mark, a swelling under my fingers, a diamond-shaped hole made by a boy with rings on every finger. I remember his face and I remember the sharp, weighted sound of those rings landing. His name was Rigg.
Two. I have three piercings in my left ear and two in my right. I did them myself with a needle and salt water and a cork. I breathed in deep and they didn’t even bleed. There’s nothing in them any more, no studs or rings or whatever. I took them out, but the holes are still there. My ears look like pincushions.
Three. My teeth are bad. One at the front is broken and three back ones are going to come out, even though they’re supposed to last me a lifetime. My teeth are terrible.
In the picture there were no scars on my face, no piercings. I had perfect teeth. I was happy and well fed and wholesome.
In other words, it wasn’t me.
I tried to tell them. I looked up from the picture and I said, “No.”
“Cassiel,” Gordon said. He crossed his legs. His trousers and his mouth made a shushing noise.
I shook my head. “Not me.”
“Come on,” Ginny said again, her hand still on mine.
I wanted to swat it off. I didn’t answer her.
“Whatever trouble you’re in, Cassiel,” she said, “whatever reason you had for running away, we can help you.”
“No, you can’t,” I said. They were too close to me. I didn’t like it.
“We’re here to help,” she said.
“Help someone else,” I said. “Help someone who wants it. I’m not him.”
“Who are you then?” Gordon asked.
Good question.
I stared at him. I smiled my angriest smile.
“What are the odds,” Gordon said to Ginny, like I wasn’t there, “of there being two identical missing boys?”
“Billions