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awake now, the gang began chatting on their journey up to Hillbrow. By the time they had reached the top of the hill, they had split into twos and threes. Sipho walked with Jabu and Joseph, stopping with them to exchange greetings of “Heyta, magents!” and “How’s your scheme?” with malunde who had spent the night in Hillbrow itself. Most of the talk was about a high-speed car chase in the middle of the night, but the cars had roared away and no one knew what had actually happened.
    The rest of the day, and those that followed, took on a similar shape to Sipho’s first day with theother malunde. They got money “parking” or washing cars, pushing amatrolley or “asking money” from motorists and customers from the restaurants, movie theaters, shops, and clubs. Sometimes they did odd jobs for shopkeepers, although there were some whom it was wiser to avoid. Sipho heard about sleeping children having cold water thrown over them or being beaten when found in a shop entrance. But the man with the droopy black mustache, selling jeans and T-shirts at Danny’s Den next to the video games shop, didn’t fit that picture. When he saw Sipho he greeted him and after a couple of days asked if Sipho would sweep his floor, giving him one rand. The next day Sipho was asked to help unload and unpack a delivery of shirts.
    “You’re quite a smart boy, you know,” the man said to him, paying him two rand this time.
    Sipho smiled, both at the coins and at the compliment. Mr. Danny Lewis, of Danny’s Den, puzzled him.
    In between the business of getting money and food, there were various ways to pass the day…riding carts…mock fighting…or, if they had small change to spare, playing video games and gambling on tiekie-dice. At other times, they just sat watching the rest of the world go by. Each day was different, yet thesame. To eat, you had first to get money. And every night the same bitter wind gripped Sipho’s bones, stopping his cold from getting better.
    On his second day Joseph told him where he could buy some iglue for himself. For a couple of days he resisted, remembering the terrible way his head had ached. He wasn’t sure whether it had come from his cold or from iglue. But when he couldn’t get to sleep at night and lay awake shivering, he was tempted. He tried to imagine he was floating away in a warm bed, but it was no good. On the fourth night, the wind was even sharper, making the fire struggle to keep alight. Sipho tapped Joseph urgently on the arm as they huddled down on the cardboard preparing to sleep.
    “Please, give me iglue. I’ll get more for you tomorrow,” he promised.
    In his pocket he had a few small coins he had begun to save for the little wooden rhino. He would use those and the money he got at Checkers in the morning.
    This time he didn’t even stop to think of Ma’s words before bringing Joseph’s bottle up to his nose. His eyelids closed, and everything around him in the pozzie —including the other boys and the biting night wind—began to fade away as he sniffed in the fumes. But now something else seemed to be staring down at him. It was upthere in the sky, getting bigger while he seemed to be getting smaller. The thing was white, with a black dot in the middle. It was an eye. Slowly a shape grew around it. When he saw the two horns and small ears, he knew what it was. The head of the little rhino. Except that it didn’t seem so little anymore, looming high above him as he felt himself shrinking smaller and smaller. But its one eye still looked so very sad, as if it was lost. Sipho drifted into an uneasy, restless sleep.
    It was Jabu who stopped him from going into the shoe repair shop the next morning.
    “My friend died from this stuff,” Jabu told him sharply. “We found the bag on his head. We took him to the hospital but he was already finished.”
    Overhearing Jabu’s story, Joseph dismissed it roughly. “Your friend was stupid. You must use a bottle, not a