You Don't Know Me

Over the seven years we been together Bless and Kira became more like sisters than anything else. Bless liked being round her. She liked the quiet that she came with. They would sit together sometimes. Ki would read her books and Bless would just be Bless. She could just ‘be’, you get me. And sometimes you got the feeling that they didn’t need words to say what they were saying. But as for me and Kira, in my mind, we were Romeo and Juliet, well maybe Romeo and some girl who was like Juliet but could be a bitch and if she wanted to could probably knock you out, especially if you called her a bitch, which I only did very rarely. Seriously, though, we were tight.

We clicked but it’s hard to see why we did. We weren’t exactly similar. In fact you could say that we were like chalk and cheesestring. I was sixteen and I left school. She went to college. I was eighteen and was just starting with the whole buying and selling cars thing. She got her A levels and signed up to one of them Open University things. I loved cars. She loved books. I hated books then. She hated cars. You couldn’t even say that we looked at things the same way.

This will give you an idea of what she was like. About a year and a half ago, she was still living in her flat with the books but she came round my yard every now and then to stay over but mainly I stayed at hers. She didn’t really feel my place if you get me, but I always made a point of ‘How comes it’s always me round at yours and you never like to come to mine?’ so from time to time she came. Anyway this one Saturday afternoon she comes round to mine and starts to make herself a cup of tea. I’m playing on my PS3 or whatever and she comes and sits next to me drinking her tea. Anyway, maybe fifteen minutes go by and eventually I get the hint and feel like I should close down the game. I’m like, ‘Just let me finish this level off and save it’ but she ain’t really that bothered. She just seems to be chilling.

So when I finally switch off the game she goes, ‘You know that boy who’s so and so’s little brother?’ and I go, ‘Yeah, I know.’

‘He’s just broken into your car.’

‘What?’

‘The red one. The convertible.’

‘What the fuck you talking about? He’s just broken into my Z3?’ I get up and start looking for the keys.

‘I don’t know. It’s the red one.’

‘What and you saw him doing it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why the fuck didn’t you say something?’

‘I did. I’m saying now.’

‘Fuck Kira. Didn’t you stop him? Did you call the police?’

‘No! Why would I call the police?’

‘Ki he’s just jacked my car and you don’t do nothing? What is wrong with you man?’ I say and run out of the door to my car.

Fucking thing has a smashed window and the glove compartment has been cleaned out and even the little coins or whatever I had in the ashtray are all gone. But it’s the window man. Fucking window’s smashed. And you might think I’m overreacting and that but windows on a car, they are almost impossible to replace properly. You can never get that factory finish thing right. The seals ain’t ever the same again and in the morning the fucking thing will steam up every time. And all the little fucking shitty pieces of glass everywhere that you keep finding for the next ten years. Shit. Sorry, just thinking about it rages me.

So Kira has followed me into the street and I’m all vex still and I’m shouting at her. What the fuck is she thinking of, you know what I mean?

‘Where you going?’ she says when she sees me get in the car.

‘I’m going to murder him,’ I go.

‘You ain’t going nowhere,’ she says and gets in the other door and leaves it open so I can’t drive away.

‘Give me one fucking reason why not?’ I say looking at her.

‘You don’t know what’s going on with him,’ she says. ‘There could be a hundred reasons he had to jack your car.’

‘I don’t give a fuck Ki,’ I say, shouting. ‘That boy has to pay one way or another.’

‘You go round there and we are over.’

‘What? What the fuck you talking about? Why do you care about that little shit?’

‘Do you even know that boy?’ she asks. ‘He could be starving. He could be on drugs. There could be anything going on with him.’

‘So fucking what?’

‘So people don’t do shit for no reason,’ she says and gets out of the car.