The Less You Know The Sounder You Sleep. Juliet Butler

we go Outside.

      We hear about Pasha losing his legs and he kisses Masha

      ‘You’re a sheep. A stupid. Silly. Stubborn. Shitty. Sheep!’ Masha thumps my arm to emphasize each word.

      There are only two kids in Ward G right now, and they’re sitting in silence, watching her hitting me. Masha doesn’t normally hit me in front of other people. Most of the kids in our ward are doing schooling or physio at the moment, so we’re just sitting on our bed by the window. The crowds are still there by the gate.

      ‘No. Won’t go out,’ I say, holding my bruised arm. ‘Won’t.’

      ‘They’ll take us out the back door through the kitchens, that’s what they said. We can play in the yard where the skips are.’

      ‘Won’t. Can’t make me.’ She’s tried, but she can’t. I won’t even start to walk.

      ‘But think what we’ll find in the skips. All sorts. It’ll be like looking for treasure. We might find dog brains or … or, gold nuggets.’

      ‘Won’t.’

      ‘Or scrunched-up newspapers with pictures of Yuri Gagarin.’ She looks at me hopefully. ‘Loads and loads of photos of him.’ I shake my head. It’s stupid now to think of going up in space with Yuri Gagarin like I did in my dreams. He’s a Healthy.

      ‘Won’t.’

      She slams her fist down on the bed.

      ‘Yolki palki! I’ll smash your skull in!’

      ‘Hey, Mashdash!’

      It’s Pasha. He’s poked his head round the door. ‘Wanna go play with my dice on the stairs?’

      ‘Yeah, I’ll come,’ says Masha, hopping down from the bed. ‘Better than staying here talking to this Cretin.’

      Playing dice with Pasha isn’t going Outside so I hop down with her and we run off down the corridor with Pasha scooting in front on his trolley. He hasn’t got his new legs yet. Aunty Nadya’s husband, Uncle Vasya, has no legs either but he has a proper fat chair like a wooden car to sit in with three big wheels and two paddles which he pulls and pushes himself along with. Everyone else just uses trolleys on the floor until they get given new legs. Uncle Vasya didn’t want false legs. He liked his own best. Pasha’s fast. Faster than anyone. Bet he’d be faster than Uncle Vasya even.

      ‘Let’s play Kiss or Pinch,’ Masha says, once we’re all sitting on the stone stairs by the half-open back door. Pasha’s sitting next to her. I’m glad he’s not sitting next to me. Kiss or Pinch is a silly game. She throws the dice.

      ‘Odd number! Pinch!’ She can pinch him anywhere and she always pinches really hard.

      ‘Aiii! You pinch like a crocodile!’ He throws the dice.

      ‘Odd! Kiss!’ He kisses her in her ear so loud I can hear and she jumps back.

      ‘You kiss like an exploding bomb!’

      I don’t get turns. I’m glad. I don’t want to get kissed by Pasha. I don’t even want to watch him kissing Masha.

      They go on playing for a bit and then Masha says, ‘Tell us about how you got your legs chopped off.’

      ‘Again?’ He rolls his eyes. ‘You’re strange, you are. OK. I’d gone down with my mates to watch the prisoners working on digging this ditch outside our village. We played this game that whenever the guard wasn’t looking, one of us would jump out and tag a prisoner.’

      ‘Why?’ I ask.

      ‘Cos you get some of his meanness passed on. See?’ He tags Masha then goes to bite me, growling. We all laugh. He’s got dimples like Yuri Gagarin. ‘I was lookout on the railway track, it was a dead-end track, see, so there was never any trains. Then I hear this noise and turn round and there’s a train reversing down the track. Come out of nowhere, it did.’ Masha’s sucking the dice in her mouth. I think she might swallow it when it comes to this next bad part.

      ‘So I’m wearing my cousins’ shoes, which are too big and laced up round the sole and my ankles to keep them on, so when I go to get off the track, one of them’s stuck in the rails, see? So I’m sitting there screaming my head off and pulling to get the shoe out and the kids are running up the bank to the train, to get the driver to stop …’

      ‘Why didn’t you just untie the laces?’ says Masha in a thick voice because the dice is still in her mouth.

      ‘Didn’t think of it. All I can think of is this train rolling back towards me with sparks flying, and then ZING!!!’ We both jump. We always do at that bit. ‘I got electrocuted and next thing I know I wake up in hospital with no legs left.’

      ‘What happened to them?’ says Masha. She knows what happened to them, so do I, but she wants to hear again. ‘The train rolled over me and cut them clean off. If I hadn’t got electrocuted and fallen back, I might’ve been cut in half myself.’

      ‘But what happened to the legs?’ says Masha again.

      ‘My dad went back and got them – he thought they’d be able to sew them back on, but they couldn’t because he didn’t put them in ice, see. So he buried them in the garden instead. Maybe he thought they’d grow back into a new me. Anyway, Mum goes out and cries over them every day but they’ll have rotted away and have all worms in them by now.’

      ‘Healthy!’ says Masha, and takes the dice out of her mouth, wipes it on her sleeve and throws it again. ‘Kiss!’

      ‘Shhh!’ Pasha puts his hand over her mouth. There are voices by the back door and we’re not allowed to sit on the stone steps. I can smell stinky papirosa smoke.

      ‘Bloody nightmare, getting in this morning,’ says one of the voices. It’s probably one of the nannies or cleaners because the nurses don’t swear.

      ‘It’s spread all round town like wildfire; they’re like a pack of slavering dogs out there. It’s disgusting.’

      ‘Can’t blame them really. They want to see the Two-Headed Girl. Give them something to blab about.’

      ‘Some of the questions though …’

      ‘… like – has it been sewn together by Stalin’s scientists as an experiment …’

      ‘… or come down from Outer Space … heard that one?’

      ‘Heard them all. Brought back by Gagarin …’

      ‘Work of the Devil …’

      ‘Poor kids. One thing they’re right about: they should never have been left to live.’

      ‘Seem happy enough …’

      ‘For now …’

      They go off then.

      We don’t say anything for a bit. I’m shivering. Or trembling or something. I wish Pasha wasn’t here.

      ‘Yobinny idiots,’ says Pasha. ‘Ignorant goats, the lot of them. There’s nothing wrong with you two. Except you can’t kiss for peanuts. Well, Masha can’t. How about you, Dash?’ He leans over to me. ‘I should get two kisses for the price of one with a Girl with Two Heads, right?’ He laughs.

      I don’t want to. I’m feeling sick, but I kiss him on the cheek anyway, as he’s right there, so close I can smell his soapiness, and I feel all tingly when I do. And stop shaking. And then he kisses me back on my cheek. And that feels all tingly too.

      Aunty Nadya always comes in to say night-night before she goes off her shift, so I ask her then. It was Masha who told me to. I ask in a whisper so the other kids can’t hear.

      ‘Why are we Together? Were w-we sewn together?’ We looked, when we got back to the ward, but we can’t see any stitches or a scar or anything, not even the smallest little trace.