Read The Bridge for Free Online Page A

I could think to standing on the rooftops, waving my arms and shouting ‘Guilty!’ of whatever it was they were accusing me of doing. I leaned inside and put back the shelf with the cocoa and sugar and tea bags best I could and closed the doors on both sides. Then I crept to the corner of the gatehouse and peered out. People were wandering about, still with a dazed how-can-this-be-happening look, but they were walking now, not running; the school was still burning, but not fiercely. The sun wasrising red through the smoke.
    I crouched there, searching the grounds for the ISIS agent, then I saw Sol. Someone had gathered the little kids together under a tree by the outer walls, away from the action. The school nurse was checking they were all right.
    I watched them a while. Sol just stood there, pale-faced, and every now and then he’d do this little jitterbug, hopping up and down, and looking around. Just like you’d do if you were eight years old and your big sister had told you to stay put until she came back, and you were desperate for her to come and terrified that she might not.
    I crept around the walls and crouched in the garden behind him. When the nurse was busy calming a hysterical kid, I whispered, ‘Hey, buddy.’
    ‘Nik!’
    ‘Shh. Where are the others?’
    ‘Looking for you!’
    ‘Did Dash get permission to take you home?’
    ‘Uh-huh. That’s why they’ve gone to look for you. We’re going to Ron David’s place. And we can go from there to home.’ He smiled a wan smile, pleased with himself for remembering.
    ‘Ron David? Who’s that?’
    ‘I don’t know. We’re gonna meet up and the people there’ll take us home. Dash said.’
    It took a moment for the lights to go on. A rendezvous. Okay. We’d had drills for this, in case everythingwent haywire. The nearest rendezvous was the church at St John’s Square.
    ‘That’s a good plan,’ I said. ‘Have you seen Macey?’
    ‘No. Jono’s looking for him too.’
    ‘Jono? Why?’
    He shrugged. But I could guess. Now that the immediate panic was over, the ISIS agents would be rounding up Southsiders, and maybe people who associated with Southsiders as well.
    ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘When the others come back –’
    ‘Aren’t you gonna wait?’
    ‘No. I’ve got something to do first. When they come back can you tell them I’ve gone ahead and will meet you at the rendezvous?’
    ‘Sure.’
    I wanted to find Mace, and I wanted to go back to Lou and Bella to say goodbye. But Mace had vanished, and Lou and Bella had been taken away. In the end all I managed was getting out without being seen. It didn’t feel right, just to go like that. I knew Lou would understand. But it didn’t feel right.
    There’s this blind skiddy in St John’s Square. He used to sit on the steps of the church, or on benches, or in doorways, rattling his cup, humming to himself, always being moved on, always coming back. We called him Lev, because he was forever quoting Leviticus at us:
thou shalt
and
shalt not
do all kinds of weird stuff. Verse after verse of what to eat, what to wear, who not to have sex with.
    It must’ve been noon by the time I came to the square, and when I arrived Lev was the first person I saw. In fact, I fell over him. He was wrapped up in his big old coat, and propped beside the rubbish bins on the corner of Skinners Lane and the square, legs sticking out. Which is how I came to fall over him, because I was all eyes for the church across the square to see what the action was at the rendezvous point.
    I’d taken a roundabout way there, partly to pull myself together and partly because I wanted to come at the place sideways in case ISIS was waiting – though I hoped they had more important things to worry about by now than a runaway school kid with a name they didn’t like.
    That run through the streets made me wish I had eyes in the back of my head. The city was suddenly a ghost town. I ran through Sentian, in the shadow of Watch Hill. Its