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too mobile these days and almost blind, so I go and keep him company a bit. I was cycling off to Allhallows for a bit of fishing when I saw you and …”
    “Thought I’d died. Which I haven’t. Don’t let me keep you.”
    He makes a suit-yourself face, and climbs up the embankment.
    I call after him, “How far is it to Allhallows, Brubeck?”
    He picks up his bike. “About five miles. Want a backie?”
    I think of Vinny and his Norton and shake my head. He mounts his bike, poser-style, and he’s gone. I scoop up a fistful of stones and fling it over the water, hard and angry.
    A SPECK-SIZED E D Brubeck vanishes behind a clump of pointy trees way up ahead. He didn’t look back. Wish I’d said yes to his offer, now. My knees are stiff and my feet are two giant throbs and my ankles feel like they’ve been attacked with tiny drills. Five miles at this rate’ll take me forever. But Ed Brubeck’s a guy, like Vinny’s a guy, and guys are all sperm-guns. My stomach growls with dry hunger. Green tea’s great while you’re drinking it, but it makes you pee like a racehorse, and now my mouth feels like a dying rat crapped in it. Ed Brubeck’s a guy, yes, but he’s not a total tosser. Last week he got into an argument with Mrs. Binkirk, our RE teacher, and got sent to Mr. Nixon for calling her “Bigot of the Year.” A grown-up insult, that. People are icebergs, with just a bit you can see and loads you can’t. I try not to think about Vinny, but I do, and remember how only this morning I dreamt of starting a band with him. Up ahead, from behind the clump of pointy trees, comes a speck-sized Ed Brubeck, cycling back my way. Probably he’s decided it’s too late to fish, and he’s heading back to Gravesend. He grows bigger and bigger until he’s life-sized, and does a show-offy skid-turn that reminds me he’s still a boy as well as a guy. His eyes are white in his dark face. “Why don’t you get on, Sykes?” He slaps his bike saddle. “Allhallow’s
miles
. It’ll be dark before you get there.”
    We wobble along the track at a decent clip. Whenever we go over a bump Brubeck says, “You okay?” and I tell him, “Yeah.” The sea breeze and bike breeze slip up my sleeves and stroke my front like a pervy Mr. Tickle. Sweat’s gluing Brubeck’s T-shirt to his back. Irefuse to think ’bout Vinny’s sweat, and Stella’s … My heart cracks again and goo dribbles out and stings, like Dettol on a graze. I grip the bike rack with both hands, but then the track gets rucklier so I steady myself by hooking one thumb through a belt loop on Brubeck’s jeans. Probably Brubeck’s getting a hard-on from this, but it’s his problem, not mine.
    Fluffy lambs are nibbling grass. Ewes watch us, like we’re planning to serve up their babies with sprouts and mash.
    We scare birds on stilts with spoony beaks; they skim off across the river. Their wing tips touch the water, sending out circles.
    Here the Thames is turning into the sea and Essex is turning gold. That smudge is Canvey Island; farther on, Southend.
    The English Channel’s Biro-blue; the sky’s the blue of snooker chalk. We judder across a footbridge over a rusty creek, half-marsh, half-dune, inland: WELCOME TO THE ISLE OF GRAIN .
    It’s not a real island, mind. Once upon a time, perhaps.
    That loony, loopy, tweety bird’s followed us. Must of.
    A LLHALLOWS-ON- S EA ’ S BASICALLY A big holiday park spilling up to the shorefront from a nothingy village behind. It’s all rows of caravans and those oblong cabins on little stilts they call trailer homes in American films. There’s half-naked kids and totally naked toddlers all over the shop, firing water pistols and playing Swingball and running about. Half-sloshed mums’re rolling their eyes at sun-pinked dads burning bangers on barbecues. I try to eat the smoke. “Dunno about you,” says Brubeck, “but I’m starving.”
    Too enthusiastically I say, “Just a bit,” so he parks his bike at the