Chapter Two – by Tallulah

Gum groaned. Sunset was streaming in through the window over her face, and her head felt like it was collapsing from the inside.

She'd never felt so bored in her entire life. Movies had blurred into each other as she and Garam stared vacantly at the screen. The garage had grown hotter and hotter, and now her head was ringing with the humidity.

There was a clatter of skates outside the garage.

Gum winced as her eyes narrowed.

She was pissed.

She glanced over at Garam, who was slumped over against the side of the car, and then at the garage door as it swung open.

Beat and Mew walked in, both laughing about something, speckled with paint.

"Hey," Mew called.

"Where're the others?" Gum snapped, her throat stinging as she spoke.

"Still at the park," Beat said. "We just came to pick up some more paint."

"You gonna start sleeping there?"

"Ah, come on," Mew said. "It's only six o'clock. You've stayed out on the streets way later than that."

"Yeah," Gum snapped. "The streets. Being a rudie. That's different."

Mew sighed. "Look, Gum, I don't want to fight with you, but I think you're way off base on this one. We're still rudies, aren't we? We still skate, we still tag…"

"But it's not the same!" Gum yelled as her head pounded behind her eyeballs. "You're like kept rudies! We don't do what bigshots like Toji Rokkaku want us to do, we do what we want to do! We express ourselves to the world, don't we?"

"Gum, please –"

"You're not expressing yourselves to anyone except each other. You're like – you're like little kids in a playground. You're not real rudies at all."

"Oh, geez!" Mew threw her hands up in frustration. "You're just being pig-headed!"

"I am not!"

"Yes, you are, if you weren't you'd come with us and actually enjoy it."

"Enjoy what?" Gum squinted as a sunbeam caught her in the eye. "Enjoy playing at being rudies? No thanks, Mew. I'll stick to real life."

Mew scowled, and walked over to Garam. Nudging him awake with her foot, she said, "Garam? Why don't you come?"

"Uhhh…to the skate park?"

Mew nodded, and smiled.

Garam looked over at Gum. "You coming?"

Gum shook her head, gritting her teeth so hard they felt as if they'd grind through her jaw.

"Nah, I'll pass this time," Garam said, flopping back against the car.

"Why?" Beat said. "You two both look like you're going brain-dead."

"It's not my type of thing," Garam said.

"And it damn well isn't mine," Gum said, glaring at the other two GGs.

"Fine," Mew said. "Your loss."

Gum watched as Mew and Beat skated out of the garage, and then collapsed back onto the sofa.

Her hair was sticking to her skin. Her arms felt like they'd faint if she asked them to do anything. And the headache gripped her skull like a raven.

"I hate the skate park!" she yelled at last.

"I sort of guessed," Garam muttered from the car. "You want to go out and tag some more?"

"No." Gum pictured the empty streets, and scowled.

"How long is this gonna go on for?" Garam said.

"Until they stop going to that stupid park. Because even if every rudie in Tokyo-to goes there…which it seems like they do…I'm not. They can't make me."

"But…then we'll be the only rudies left out here, and we can see ourselves how shit that is."

"Then you think of something to do," Gum snapped, sitting bolt upright and glaring at the shadows covering Garam. "Because I have had it with all this."

Piranha gazed up at the darkening sky, and grinned. This had been one of the best days she'd ever spent. Nothing to do but skate and tag and eat, and no one to try and kill her for doing it. She couldn't stop a huge grin covering her face.

She stood at the entrance to the full-pipe, her shadow falling away into its shady depths. She dashed forward, then leapt, wall-riding to the left, jumping sideways and wall-riding on the opposite side, the clatter of her skates echoing down the tunnel.

At last, about halfway along, she missed the wall, and landed on the ground. Giggling, she reached round and put a tag on the concrete behind her. The full-pipe was bare of any other tags at the moment – as Slate had said, no one had dared to take it.

Piranha grinned. Well, she had to break the mould then, didn't she?

She shook up another paint can and started doing an X-tra large tag. That took her round the corner, and she'd just finished it when she crashed into a dark figure –

"Yipe!" Piranha spun to face the intruder, and realised it was a Love Shocker.

"What are you doing in here, GG?" the Love Shocker demanded. "I thought we were saying this place was neutral territory."

"What are you doing in here?" Piranha retorted, staring pointedly at the girl's paint can.

The Love Shocker shrugged. "I'm looking for a friend."

"Oh, yeah, sure you are."

The rudie gave her a nasty brown-eyed glare, but before she could answer more voices echoed down the full-pipe.

"Kell? You still here?"

"Yeah."

"Shar in here?"

"Nope. I guess she went home or something."

Two other Love Shockers came towards them. One looked like a normal Love Shocker – tall, vicious, and scowling – but the other was smaller, and her hair, instead of being short and spiky, was long and had been fastened into two plaits.

"Why're you looking for someone down here?" Piranha asked.

Kell shrugged. "We've been looking all over the park for her and this was the last place we saw her. Moron."

"Don't worry," the smaller Love Shocker said. "She probably just went back to the HQ or something. Right, Dash?"

The taller Love Shocker nodded. "We'll find her, Kell."

"I'm not worried about her," Kell said. "I'm just pissed. Her disappearing like this is getting on my nerves."

She turned to face Piranha. "If you're not out of here during the next ten seconds, I will tag your ass so hard you won't be able to sit down."

"I'm supposed to be scared?" Piranha shook her paint can. "Catch me if you can, broken hearts."

She leapt, and began wall-riding again, and heard shouts behind her as the Love Shockers strove to catch up.

Piranha grinned. She loved this place.

Gum tried to focus on the car. It looked like it had developed a hump.

She blinked again, and saw that it was Yo-Yo, asleep on top of it.

Why the hell couldn't she sleep?

Rolling over, she glanced at her watch. 2:56 in the morning. A bad time to have insomnia. Maybe it was the heat. Her clothes were sticking to her, and the garage stank of sweat.

Or maybe it was the memories of the evening.

The other GGs had trailed back in at about 10 o'clock, flushed, grinning, and high-fiving. And for the next hour or so, they'd sat around exchanging skate park stories, and making skate park jokes, and thinking up skate park plans.

Garam had become very busy playing pinball. And Gum had sat there, sourness growing under her ribs, wanting to scream, to smash, to cry.

In the end she'd yelled, "Shut up about the bloody skate park!" and Cube had snapped, "Look, just quit being such a party pooper, okay? What is wrong with you?"

She'd wanted to scream back, but they'd all been staring at her, and the same question had been in their eyes.

What is wrong with you?

"I'm a freak," Gum muttered.

But she wasn't going to that park. She couldn't. Even if she changed her mind about it being a cop-out, she wouldn't go. They'd all snigger behind her back. She admitted it at last. We were right and she was wrong. As usual.

A few feet away from her, Beat snored, rolled over, and muttered something. Something that sounded a lot like 'skate park.'

"Right, that's it." Gum leapt to her feet and started to change back into her day clothes. "I have had it with you guys."

Her skin was hot and sticky. Maybe it would be cooler outside.

When she was dressed, she skated to the door, wrenched it open, and managed to talk herself out of slamming it. Outside the streets were dark, and there was nobody about. They looked like they hadn't been built for people at all, but as monuments for something, or film sets no one had used.

This isn't a time for humans, Gum thought.

A slight breeze flicked round her neck, cooling her skin. But the rage pulsed around her forehead still.

The corners of the world were filled with shadow. Sometimes she thought she saw things lurking there, but stopping to look made them vanish. A car rushed past her, the darkness reflected in the windscreen making it look empty. Then the streetlamp rushed over it, and she saw an empty-eyed commuter, driving for his life.

She moved on, through the bus terminal. It was completely silent here. The buses surrounded her, waiting, empty, and the air lay over her like a rug, heavy and hot. She yawned, and the tags here blurred, and she couldn't comprehend them for a moment.

She glanced up at the sky as she left the terminal and walked past the empty square. Clouds covered it like sand, and the moon stared down at her, a blind eye in a swirling, melting face.

She hadn't planned to go to Center Point. But somehow her feet took her there through the silent town, until she realised she was standing on a bridge overlooking the park, filled with thick black shadows. It was practically empty now – once or twice she thought she saw a flicker of movement, but it could have just been litter blowing along the ground.

She leant against the wall, closed her eyes, rested her face against the warm stone. Her eyelids felt heavier. The stone seemed to soften, let her sink into it.

A nip of air on her face shook her back to wakefulness eventually. A line of spikes on the house opposite became birds, and cawed off into the darkness.

And the skate park still lurked in front of her, like a bruise on her consciousness.

They'd laughed without her. Abandoned her.

"I hate you," she hissed at it. "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you."

She was tired, she knew that. And the night felt like it had got inside her skull.

But that still didn't explain the wave of hatred that broke over her, leaving her gasping, the wave spilling from the skate park, the wave that hissed, I hate you too…

And before she could think she found herself running, running back down the street, which wavered and shook in front of her eyes. She kept misjudging steps, slipping and stumbling, skates catching on the pavement and almost knocking her down.

And she must have stumbled back into the garage. The next thing she knew, she was lying on the area of floor where she normally slept, trembling so badly she couldn't stop.

And time passed and sooner or later pale light started to filter in through the window, and the other GGs started to wake up.

"You coming to the skate park?" Beat called over to Mew, across Gum's head.

Gum sat bolt upright. "Don't!"

They both gazed at her, looking puzzled.

"It's – it's – there's something weird about it," she said.

"Oh, yeah, right, Gum," Mew said. "Look, can't you just agree to disagree on this one?"

"But there is – last night I went out there and it – it told me it hated me…or something…"

"Ever heard of dreaming?" Mew said, and walked away.

"I wasn't!"

"Sure you weren't."

I wasn't, Gum began to say…then stopped.

Was I?

She remembered lying against the wall, eyes shut. Yes. She must have dozed off there. Right?

Right.

And she'd dreamt that – that feeling. The skate park was just a place she hated, that's all, it wasn't evil or possessed or demonic. The hatred had been a dream.

Maybe it was her seeing things. Maybe she was going crazy.

Anyway, time to forget all this. She had to find something to do today, or go crazy for real.