I don’t know why I talk to you all the time. Should prolly stop. Ain’t the look in Riverside. I want to stop. Keep trying. But you listen. The others only listen when they fed. And we hungry most always. But you don’t get hungry do you?

Got you all strapped up round my middle. And it is true you keep me warm. So the boys don’t need to know I talk to you. They would laugh until they sick if they knew I still had me ol blankie.

It’s just between you and me, eh?

I can tell you a secret. Got a wobbly peg. Can’t stop poking at it with me lapping cheat. Used to be a palone on Grove Street who paid sterling for milky pegs. Dunno her ends. Got bun up for witchin.

I think I tell you what’s passing cause it helps to think it’s not passing to me. In my bonnet I’m in a big old pillow chair with a fat lovely daddy an mebbe I’m reading him a story about Skelly and his ventures. They only ventures when they happening to a made up boy. Just feel nasty close up.

All this coughing making it hard to think. Cold too. No sleep. The others been coughing too. We split up. Crawled away from the big ol pile of boys to find a spot to hack a lung up. All sick. Can see my face in a broken bit of glass. See the yellow comin. Try not to think about it.

Got to get up and move. Still see the writing in my eyeline. Symbols and all sorts. No use to me, can’t read. Itchy under my skin. Witch poison. Mebbe we gets better? What’s the play?

I stamp on the roof of the metal box. Traditional alarm clock of the river rat. These ol boxes used to carry riches all over the place. Now they are a fortress for scummers. Vermin they call us. They’d all kill us if they had a chance. So we have to raft it out here to sleep, away from all the grown up bastards.

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The moon is swimming in ol father thames, and I get lost in the white shiny ripples. Thunder clap.

Ninja done snuck and slap the back of me bonce.

“You avin a menbung Skelly Boy?”

I rub my cranium and point at the moon. It’s gone though, cloud come over. Now I look twice the plum.

He stretches and yawns, tries to act like he ain’t as sick as we all are. Does a little jig.

“The day is for them!”

“The night is for us!” Manleb howls as he pulls himself up onto the roof to join us.

All across the raft the boys howl back, but most of them can’t even make it through a good lungful before they start coughing.

Manleb does the count.

“Skelly, Ninja, North Face, Pigeon, Mud, Chips and Bleeder. Where’s Nikair? NIKAIR!”

Bleeder has the bleeding disease. We wrap him up good, keep his skin hid. Got his uses though. Reads and writes. He can even use some tech. Got chuck out on street older than most. Done his school. Want to show him the symbols in my eyes. But scared though. He hates witches. Could grass me right up, no warning. Witch tech in me system. They’d bun me up quick in riverside.

We all scatter, searching the containers. Pigeon finds Nikair.

I feel the tears comin when I see him like that. Why am I the only one that cries like a snivveler? Others gone quiet. But they don’t get the wet eyes like me. They do me the solid, tending not to see.

“He ain’t breathing.” Manleb states the bleedin’

Coughed himself to death. Skin got weird black lines under it. Died real quick. Normally takes weeks. Some bodies more weak to witch poison than others. Everyone sees the yellow sickness. Nobody says it out loud.

We stand there fidgeting and fussing.

Tongue pushes and pushes at me wobbler.

Little tiny whisper in my head.

Ain’t my voice.

Can’t quite hear it yet...