Mr Dibbs Fixes Bikes

4

Still not tired. He tried flopping back on the bed, arms outside the covers, arms inside the covers, arms cradling his head. He tried curling into a ball and then stretching out on his stomach. Nothing helped and why was it so bright outside anyway? He moved across to the window, crossing too wide a space for it to be his bedroom, and peeled back one of the curtains.

The Moon glowed down, lighting the roofs of neighbouring houses with a strange, milky haze that almost looked as though it had rained, but there wasn't a cloud in the sky. It looked bigger, but that couldn't be right. The Moon didn't just change its size because he looked at it from a few hundred miles north of where he used to look at it. He could see patterns on the surface, dark bits, lines and circles that, if he squinted, could look like a man's face.

The stars, too, looked brighter and there were a whole lot more of them than he remembered seeing back home. It looked like someone had thrown glitter up into the sky and it had stayed there. That wasn't all he could see, either. There were trees, not only those that lined the end of the gardens at the rear of this row of houses, but further out, beyond the estate.

Big trees that took on shadowed, terrifying forms. Monsters that reached up to the night sky, fighting against glowing moons and twinkling stars, vying for attention or dominance, or simply just trees, not even swaying in the wind. Too many trees, not enough buildings, that was only one of the problems of this ghastly Northern town.

A light caught his eye and stood on tip-toes to look down into the back garden. Probably chancers coming to burgle what they thought was an empty house. They'd come a cropper if Mum caught them, she'd taken loads of self-defence classes and had beaten a mugger up once. Well, she didn't beat him up, not really, but she had held on to her bag long enough for the bloke to give up and run off. She was tough was his mum!

It wasn't burglars. It was that old bloke, walking down to the big shed at the end of his garden, huddled against those stupid, worthless trees. Frederick watched until his toes began to hurt before looking around for something to stand on. An old stool, plastic, that he used to stand on before he'd grown tall enough to reach the sink, gave him the height he needed to see what the old geezer was doing. People were weird, up north, it could be anything.

After a minute, or so, the old bloke emerged from the shed, carrying something in his other hand from the torch. A watering can. At this time of night! Step by step, the old bloke moved up and down the flower beds, pouring water onto the plants until, Frederick guessed, he ran out of water, then he returned to the shed, only to come back out moments later and carry on watering.

When he emptied the watering can for the third time, he left the can in the big shed, locked it and then just stood there, looking at the garden. The old man took something from the pocket of those dirty overalls, rubbed his nose and put it back in his pocket. They didn't have much money in the north, Frederick surmised, otherwise the old bloke would wear something other than those filthy overalls all the time.

He ducked as the old man looked up and felt his breath coming in a rush. His hand reached up to stop the curtain swinging, and he prayed the old bloke hadn't seen him watching. People didn't like it when you watched them, especially black kids watching them. They always assumed black kids were up to good, casing out their places to rob. Frederick had had people shouting at him for less more often than he would have liked.

Enough time passed, he hoped, and he edged his face back up over the windowsill, opening the curtain only enough for one of his eyes to peer out, back into the garden, but the old bloke had gone. His breathing started to calm and opened the curtain again, moving closer to the glass of the window and looking each way along the stretch of gardens. Only the old man's garden sat on one side, but, on the other, he could see big gardens stretching off, curling out of sight. So much space doing nothing but looking green. Or it would look green, if it wasn't the middle of the night.

A yawn escaped his lips, almost breaking his jaw, and he felt his eyes blinking. A second before, he hadn't felt tired at all, but now he could fall asleep where he stood. He took one last look at the garden below and then stepped down from the stool, leaving it in place in case he needed to watch for burglars after all.

The bed felt colder, now that he had left the covers tossed aside, but he didn't mind. It felt comforting, reminding him of how cold it could get in the flat back home. Tomorrow, the difficult stuff would begin. Tomorrow, he would have to learn what it would take to live in this town at the arse-end of the world and he knew it wasn't going to be easy. He didn't want to be here and he knew no-one wanted him to be here.

For his mum, though, he would try. Or, at least he would pretend to try, if nothing else. He doubted anything could get him to like this town, that didn't have enough people living there, or this house, that had far too much room for two people, or the bumpkins that lived in this dull, boring place. They were all too different. Everything was too different. How could he possibly get used to any of it?